# articles

feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106541
title: Facebook Removes RARBG Page After Copyright Complaint
uri: Facebook-Removes-RARBG-Page-After-Copyright-Complaint
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/keJrk-mxUH8/
content:
<p><img src="media/1a653914.rarbg-logo.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/rarbg-logo.jpg" alt="rarbg-logo" width="180" height="91" class="alignright size-full wp-image-99444">With millions of regular visitors RARBG is one of the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">most popular torrent sites</a> on the Internet. </p>
<p>Like most sites of its size, <a href="https://rarbg.to">RARBG</a> also has a Facebook presence where it keeps its users informed about the latest developments, including new features and the occasional outage. </p>
<p>However, a few hours ago <a href="https://www.facebook.com/rarbg.com.fanclub">RARBG&#8217;s official Facebook page</a> suddenly disappeared.</p>
<p>Initially, the operator assumed that there was some kind of error, but after logging into Facebook he was presented with the following message.</p>
<p>“We have disabled or removed access to the following content you posted on Facebook because we received a report from a third party that the content infringes their copyright(s).&#8221;</p>
<p><center><img src="media/2b578b8f.rarbgface.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/rarbgface.png" alt="rarbgface" width="599" height="273" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-106543"></center></p>
<p>TF spoke with the operator of the torrent site who informed us that they were careful not to link to any infringing material. In fact, until now they have never received any copyright complaints from Facebook. </p>
<p>According to RARBG, Facebook simply took a copyright holder complaint for granted without any further investigation.</p>
<p>&#8220;Once again Facebook proved that they are not fighting for freedom of speech and they will bend over to any company that makes any copyright complaint without even taking the time to send a warning or properly investigate the issue,&#8221; RARBG&#8217;s admin says.</p>
<p>This isn&#8217;t the first time that Facebook has shut down a torrent site fanpage. Previously, the same happened to <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-facebook-down-141217/">The Pirate Bay</a>, KickassTorrents and ExtraTorrent. </p>
<p>For RARBG the removal was the last straw. The torrent site doesn&#8217;t plan to make a new Facebook page just to risk starting all over again a few months from now, so will simply be a little less social instead.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> Limetorrents informed us that Facebook also deleted their page, which had tens of thousands of fans.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106364
title: How You Can Help to Fix EU Copyright Law
uri: How-You-Can-Help-to-Fix-EU-Copyright-Law
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/OQKFeDtB1jA/
content:
<p><img src="media/db7b975c.copyright-branded.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/copyright-branded.jpg" alt="copyright-branded" width="250" height="164" class="alignright size-full wp-image-56211">The pro-copyright lobbies are the best organised in the world. Second only to the tobacco lobby. They gather up employees and contractors and tell them real people and real internet users are bad people who want to harm them.</p>
<p>When I was in the Parliament, I was at one time visited by a young mother of two who wondered why I was trying to put her children without food or education on the streets. She was a script-writer for tax-payer-financed French-German TV station ARTE.</p>
<p>Even if I understand that her wages don&#8217;t come from copyright licenses, even indirectly, and even if she appeared not to have thought of that, it was uncomfortable to be accused of harming someone else&#8217;s children. </p>
<p>Had I not been 10 years younger than her, and convinced that there are ways for her to make money that don&#8217;t include destroying the internet or putting file-sharers out of their homes, I may have opted to change my political opinion because of her heartfelt accusation.</p>
<p>Many individuals like her are currently visiting our legislators. Many politicians are presently being accused of harming children should they consider progressive copyright proposals.</p>
<p>What these politicians aren&#8217;t hearing, are the stories of those people who get cease-and-desist letters, get sued, or put through criminal trials or get handed damages so large they can&#8217;t reasonably be paid off in a life-time by a single individual. They&#8217;re not hearing the stories of those who&#8217;ve built networks for millions of Europeans where, for want of better words, cultural affinity arises.</p>
<p>File-sharing and peer-to-peer culture, like no other culture in modern times, has created a common cultural base in Europe. Although I hope that even without my idealistic formulation of these matters, you&#8217;re all convinced copyright at least somehow needs to change.</p>
<p>Politics too often gets stuck in the realm of the possible. It is possible that a 35-year-old mother could have her income impacted by a legislative reform that in no way influences her employer. It is not possible, but real, that many individuals in the European Union every year are caused heavy, even impossible, costs due to file-sharing trials and cease-and-desist letters. </p>
<p>It is not possible, but real, that copyright laws are increasingly forcing technology companies to innovate to the disadvantage of the freedom of the users.</p>
<p>The European Parliament needs to be taken back down to reality, and away from the realm of possible dangers before June 16th.</p>
<p>If you are presently in the European Union, or if you can reach out people in the European Union, in any way at all: this is the time to ask them to contact their representatives in the European Parliament. Tell the Members about yourselves, your lives, your children and the world in which you want to live. Give them a taste of the reality which exists away from the speculative possibilities of professional lobbies.</p>
<p>Whenever we&#8217;re too tired or too scared to tell our politicians what is important, whoever has the resources will weave them stories of realms of possibilities instead. The future of copyright, and of all of the Internet, is too important to leave in the hands of such story-tellers. </p>
<p>Go to <a href="http://copywrongs.eu">copywrongs.eu</a> and figure out the specific demands you want to place to your MEP, but remember – your biggest asset is that you&#8217;re real, and the lobby stories mostly aren&#8217;t.</p>
<p>&#8212;</p>
<h4>About The Author</h4>
<p><a href="media/585d5d19.ameliaa.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/ameliaa.jpg"><img src="media/585d5d19.ameliaa.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/ameliaa.jpg" alt="ameliaa" width="150" height="135" class="alignright size-full wp-image-100403"></a></p>
<p><em>Amelia Andersdotter represented the Swedish Pirate Party in the European Parliament between December 2011 and July 2014. She&#8217;s an expert on topics related to the Internet, intellectual property and IT-policy.</em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106479
title: Study: Swedes View 280m ‘Pirate’ Movies & TV Shows Annually
uri: Study-Swedes-View-280m-Pirate-Movies-TV-Shows-Annually
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/CTrSHro7ycE/
content:
<p><img src="media/c579e316.pirate-card.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/pirate-card.jpg" alt="pirate-card" width="250" height="210" class="alignright size-full wp-image-86520">As the spiritual home of The Pirate Bay and the birthplace of some of the world&#8217;s most hardcore file-sharers, Sweden has definitely earned its place in the history books. If Swedes can be converted to legal offerings, just about anyone can, one might argue.</p>
<p>A new study just published by the Film and TV Industry Cooperation Committee (<a href="http://ftvs.se">FTVS</a>) in collaboration with research company Novus reveals some interesting trends on local media consumption habits.</p>
<p>Covering both legal and illegal services, the survey is based on 1,003 interviews carried out between Feb 27 and March 9 2015 among citizens aged 16 to 79-years-old.</p>
<p><strong>Legal and illegal consumption</strong></p>
<p>On the legal TV and movie consumption front, Sweden appears to be doing well. A decent 71% of respondents said they buy services such as Netflix and HBO, with a quarter using such services every day and 35% watching several times each week.</p>
<p>In comparison, 29% of all respondents admitted to using illegal services to watch film and television. Perhaps unsurprisingly the activity is most prevalent among the young, with 60% of 16 to 29-year-olds confessing to using pirate sites.</p>
<p>The survey found that around 280 million movies and TV shows are watched illegally in Sweden each year, with respondents indicating they would have paid for around a third of those if illegal services weren&#8217;t available.</p>
<p>With torrents extremely popular around Europe, it&#8217;s interesting to note that downloading of content is now taking second place to online streaming. The survey found that 19% of respondents stream content illegally, while 17% download. When users engage in both streaming and downloading, streaming is the more popular activity.</p>
<p>The study notes that dual users (those that use both legal and illegal services) watch every third movie or TV show illegally, an average of four films and seven TV shows every month.</p>
<p><strong>Attitudes</strong></p>
<p>The survey also polled respondents on their attitudes to piracy. Six out of ten respondents said they think that using &#8216;pirate&#8217; sites to watch movies and TV shows is &#8220;wrong&#8221;. Four out of ten agreed, but previously used these services anyway.</p>
<p>On the thorny question of what to do about piracy, respondents were asked what they thought would be the best solution.</p>
<p>Somewhat conveniently for an anti-piracy focused report, 43% of respondents indicated that ISPs should play a part in reducing the numbers of user visiting illegal services, with 24% opting for site blocking measures and 19% suggesting a warning notice scheme.</p>
<p>However, when it comes to the heavy hand of the law, a minority of respondents show an interest. Just 10% believe that boosting law enforcement and judicial resources will solve the problem while a tiny 4% think that harsher punishments will bring results.</p>
<p>Commenting on the report, Per Strömbäck of FTVS says that the situation in Sweden is far from satisfactory.</p>
<p>&#8220;There is a common misconception that piracy is less of a problem today because we have a wide range of legal options. On the contrary, the problem of illegal services is greater than ever,&#8221; Strömbäck says.</p>
<p>&#8220;The situation is not sustainable. For us to be able to continue to produce, distribute and show films and TV audiences want to see and pay for, we need a functioning digital market and measures to stop the illegal competition.&#8221;</p>
<p>With site blocking <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-holders-want-pirate-bay-blocked-in-sweden-141111/">firmly on the agenda</a> in Sweden, entertainment industry groups will be pinning their hopes on success in the courts since there is clearly no appetite for punishing the public.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106262
title: Now There’s a Popcorn Time For Porn Too
uri: Now-There-s-a-Popcorn-Time-For-Porn-Too
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/2SUNA3nPX4Q/
content:
<p><img src="media/ce2d7a78.porntime.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/porntime.png" alt="porntime" width="211" height="121" class="alignright size-full wp-image-106264">&#8220;The Internet Is For Porn,&#8221; is a phrase commonly heard in popular culture. </p>
<p>While there are plenty of other uses, it&#8217;s true that the adult industries are early adopters of many Internet related technologies, from online payments to streaming services. </p>
<p>Porn also contributed to the early popularity of BitTorrent, where adult videos and pictures were often among the most shared files. With this in mind, it&#8217;s odd that one of the newest piracy revelations completely ignored the genre.</p>
<p>&#8220;How can it be, that Popcorn Time has been around for over a year and no one has made Popcorn Time for PORN? Since everyone knows that the Internet is for porn,&#8221; Porn Time developer Richard tells TF.</p>
<p>Faced with this short-coming, Richard decided to pick up the gauntlet and fill this gaping hole. First on his own, and later with help from several other developers. Fast forward a few weeks and the application is ready to go out to the public.</p>
<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re proud to officially release Porn Time, the first Popcorn Time for porn movies,&#8221; Richard says.</p>
<p><center><img src="media/e4972da6.porntime.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/porntime.jpg" alt="porntime" width="600" height="362" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-106427"></center></p>
<p><a href="http://porntime.ws/">Porn Time</a> is based on existing Popcorn Time code and works in a similar fashion to other forks. It uses BitTorrent under the hood and works on most popular platforms. In addition, the streams can be cast directly to the big screen with Chromecast, Airplay or DLNA.</p>
<p>The torrents are pulled from the Pornleech tracker but the team hopes to add more sources in the future to expand the library.</p>
<p>Staying true to the Popcorn Time philosophy the application is completely open source. This allows other developers to contribute, or start their own forks.</p>
<p>&#8220;Porn Time is released as an open source project, and we&#8217;re setting up Gitlab on our servers, since we&#8217;re pretty sure Github won&#8217;t allow us to run the project in their hub,&#8221; Richard says.</p>
<p>Since Porn Time relies on peer-to-peer technology, the loading speed of the clips mainly depends own how well-seeded the torrents are. But with porn, this is usually not a problem.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> The <a href="http://popcorn4ever.to/">Popcorn4ever</a> fork has had porn content for several months already, in addition to mainstream video. This fork sources content from various sites including KickassTorrents and The Pirate Baye as well as its own decentralized DHT/Kademlia network (NeoKad).</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106031
title: BitTorrent’s DHT Turns 10 Years Old
uri: BitTorrent-s-DHT-Turns-10-Years-Old
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/L0R9S5shbpc/
content:
<p><strong>The Birth of DHT, May 2005</strong></p>
<p>When BitTorrent started in 2002, decentralization was one of its main innovations. The central structure of services like Napster ultimately led to their downfall, and while decentralized systems such as eDonkey/eMule and Gnutella existed, they were often cumbersome and filled with fakes and spam.</p>
<p>BitTorrent was also somewhat individualized. Clients only dealt with clients on the swarms they were interested in, and all conducted business through a tracker.</p>
<p>This led to problems though, when trackers went down, as the trackers were the only way for peers to get information about others in the swarm. There was no fallback, except trying to add more trackers and hope everyone else adds the same. However, with the launch of Distributed Hash Tables (DHT) these problems were all but over.</p>
<p>That two similar but incompatible DHT systems were launched within weeks of each other is quite surprising, given the history behind both. To this day, in fact, the systems are still incompatible, although there are <a href="http://plugins.vuze.com/plugin_details.php?plugin=mlDHT" target="_blank">plug-ins</a> that allow the use of both to act as a bridge between the two swarms (one Vuze, one Mainline). </p>
<p>When you factor in that both were released just months after <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EXeem" target="_blank">eXeem</a> had tried and failed to do a similar thing (earning significant criticism while doing so) the success and longevity of both look even more impressive. But how did they come about?</p>
<p>The Vuze DHT debuted first, with <a href="http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Azureus2_changelog#2.3.0.0_-_May_2.2C_2005" target="_blank">version 2.3.0</a> of the Azureus client on May 2, 2005. In its <a href="http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=772" target="_blank">announcements back then</a>, they were keen to stress the difference from eXeem, stating it was a decentralized layer on top of BitTorrent, rather than a decentralised BitTorrent system itself. Within 24 hours there were <a href="http://www.slyck.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=145836&amp;sid=ecbbaefb8be98f136f99990678639379#p145836" target="_blank">more than 200,000 peers</a>, and there are currently around 1.1 million peers on the network.</p>
<p>According to Paul Gardener, the main developer of the Azureus DHT system, tracker redundancy wasn’t the main reason behind its development. Instead, decentralization for search was driving it. </p>
<p><em>“That was one of my pet aims when I joined the Azureus development team,&#8221;</em> Gardener told TF earlier this month. <em>&#8220;But the others in the team weren&#8217;t sure if search was a priority, so I found a way of working on some decentralization that perhaps one day could evolve into/be adapted for search. Of course decentralized tracking was a good aim in itself.”</em></p>
<figure id="attachment_106041" style="width: 150px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img class="wp-image-106041 size-thumbnail" src="media/7ac12316.Gardner-150x150.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/Gardner-150x150.jpg" alt="Paul Gardner, Azureus/Vuze Developer" width="150" height="150"><figcaption id="figcaption_attachment_106041" class="wp-caption-text"><sup>Paul Gardner, Azureus/Vuze Developer</sup></figcaption></figure>
<p><em>“I started from scratch,”</em> Gardener recalls, <em>“there weren&#8217;t any libraries out there I could use, so had to figure out which kind of DHT to use (Kademlia) etc. [It took] a few months I guess.”</em></p>
<p>Three weeks later, Bittorrent Inc. released their <a href="http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0005.html" target="_blank">own version of DHT</a> with the release of version 4.1. This was then adopted by the then popular client BitComet in <a href="http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=822" target="_blank">early June</a>, and by other clients soon after. </p>
<p>While the timing may suggest otherwise, BitTorrent&#8217;s DHT wasn’t a response to Vuze’s release at all, as the person responsible – Drue Loewenstern – had been working on it since 2002.</p>
<p><em>“I started working on the DHT in the summer of 2002 after making the first Mac BitTorrent clients, a year before Azureus was <a href="http://sourceforge.net/blog/potm-2004-09/" target="_blank">established on Sourceforge</a>. Finishing it off and integration into BitTorrent started in 05 when BT became a company. I was in testing and about to release it when Azureus launched theirs,” </em> Loewenstern says.</p>
<p>The inspiration for the BitTorrent mainline DHT came from an unlikely and famous source: Aaron Swartz.</p>
<p><em>“Distributed hash tables were an inspiring area of research. I was really into P2P, having just worked on MojoNation and BitTorrent, and wanted to do all sorts of cool decentralized things like trust metrics. Aaron Swartz, 15 at the time, circulated a one page <a href="http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/000116" target="_blank">implementation of the Chord algorithm</a> and I was struck by its simplicity,</em> Loewenstern notes.</p>
<p><em>&#8220;I started looking into DHTs specifically and Kademlia was the first DHT paper that really clicked with me and seemed like it might work in the real world So I decided to start implementing it without really knowing what I was going to do with it.&#8221;</em></p>
<p>Contrary to Vuze, redundancy was one of the main motivations driving the development of the mainline DHT.</p>
<p><em>In the case of BitTorrent, the goal of the DHT has always been to make BT more robust, to improve performance by finding more peers, and to simplify publishing by making a tracker optional,”</em> Loewenstern says.</p>
<p><strong>DHT &#8216;Haters&#8217;</strong></p>
<p>Of course, not everyone was thrilled to see the introduction of DHT. Private trackers were opposed to DHT as it enabled people to use the site’s torrents without being under the strict control of the tracker admins. </p>
<p>The solution to this was a form of access control called the <a href="http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0027.html">private flag</a>, which disabled DHT, along with Peer Exchange (PEX) and restricted peer access to trackers – locking things into the way of 2005.</p>
<p>The flag works by being inside the data used to generate the hash, so if disabled, it would change the overall torrent hash, meaning a torrent with the flag enabled would be a completely separate swarm from one with the flag disabled. It also gave these sites a new way to market themselves, by taking the term “private flagged torrent trackers” and condensing it to “private trackers,” implying some form of privacy.</p>
<p>This move though, was not by choice. </p>
<p><em>“There&#8217;s always been tensions between clients and private trackers,”</em> Vuze&#8217;s Gardener says. <em>“In particular they like to ban Vuze because it is &#8216;open source and people have hacked it to report incorrect stats&#8217; or other such &#8216;reasons&#8217;. I&#8217;ve never been a fan of [the private flag] as a solution.”</em></p>
<p>Loewenstern agrees<em> </p>
<p>“It came to be because some index site operators enforce upload/download ratios in an effort to keep seeders around for torrents that nobody wants to be left holding the bag for by seeding. They thought DHT (and PEX) might let users bypass the ratio system so they made a lot of noise about banning clients that implemented DHT,&#8221; he says. </p>
<p>&#8220;Azureus didn’t want to get banned so they came up with the private flag and added it to their client. It wasn’t my decision to add it to BitTorrent. Without PEX, torrents take longer to ramp up so it annoys me when people upload private torrents to public index sites.”</em></p>
<p><strong><strong><em>NEXT, The BitComet Incident</em></strong></strong></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106488
title: Criminals When You Pirate, Criminals When You Pay
uri: Criminals-When-You-Pirate-Criminals-When-You-Pay
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/JRBXl6pfz5U/
content:
<p><img src="media/11f9912d.facepalm-featured-150x150.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/facepalm-featured-150x150.jpg" alt="facepalm-featured" width="96" height="96" class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-82883">For many in the Internet community the occasional download is not only a petty matter, but in some cases entirely justifiable.</p>
<p>File-sharers are often people who turned to unofficial sources thanks to a content vacuum created by Big Media and following abusive pricing practices that took advantage of the supply monopoly. While not excusable, their actions should hardly come as a surprise.</p>
<p>But despite the fact that most downloading is a civil issue that the majority of courts have little to no time for, efforts to characterize the act as &#8216;criminal&#8217; and to label participants as &#8216;thieves&#8217; persist. However, since Joe Public accepts that file-sharing of copyright content must be &#8220;wrong&#8221; on some level, he understands why people might be upset and grudgingly accepts the label.</p>
<p>Recently, however, (and perhaps in response to piracy) prices have been falling. Content is more readily available online too, brilliantly so in the case of music, less so in the case of movies. But things are getting there, there&#8217;s little doubt about that. The reasons to become a &#8220;criminal&#8221; are happily becoming fewer.</p>
<p>Of course, people still pirate. Some exclusively so, others to augment their legitimate supply of Spotify music and Netflix video. The first group might never pay, but the latter is getting the idea. They&#8217;re enjoying having access to tens of millions of streaming tracks and the ability to conveniently binge-watch TV. They&#8217;re signed up paying customers, a fitting &#8220;Hollywood-ending&#8221; to a pirate career.</p>
<p>And then they get shit on again.</p>
<p>Users of Netflix outside the U.S. are beginning to realize (if they haven&#8217;t known forever) that by using a VPN they can get access to more content than they can normally. They&#8217;re paying for the service, what&#8217;s wrong with that? Well, apparently something called &#8216;licensing&#8217; forbids them from doing so &#8211; as if any Netflix customer anywhere gives a damn about that?</p>
<p>In most other environments, when one legitimately buys something from overseas &#8211; Internet services in particular &#8211; there are no issues. You pay hard cash, the supplier gets paid and everyone is happy. But with Netflix (through no fault of theirs) the proverbial hits the fan.</p>
<p>Paying customers who use a VPN to access the service are now regularly accused of a myriad of offenses, from breaching Netflix&#8217;s license to being morally corrupt. Worst still, and like their Pirate Bay-using counterparts, they too are being labeled as criminals by elements of the entertainment industry.</p>
<p>Just this week Bell Media chief Mary Ann Turcke <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/my-daughter-is-a-netflix-vpn-thief-media-boss-confesses-150604/">described her own 15-year-old daughter</a> as a &#8220;thief&#8221; after learning she&#8217;d accessed U.S. Netflix from Canada.</p>
<p>Her own daughter. A thief. A criminal. A menace to society. No better than someone who downloads movies for free and doesn&#8217;t pay the industry even a single dime. Come on! Is this really the route we want to go down?</p>
<p>What can possibly be achieved by using the same aggressive terms to describe a shoplifter, a Pirate Bay user and someone who actually pays to use a legitimate service? </p>
<p>Earlier this week, Andy Archibald, deputy director of the UK&#8217;s National Crime Agency&#8217;s Cyber Crime Unit, described the downloading of films, music and games as a gateway to more serious crime.</p>
<p>&#8220;That’s criminality. It’s almost become acceptable,&#8221; Archibald told the Infosecurity Europe conference in London.</p>
<p>&#8220;That’s the first stages, I believe, of a gateway into the dark side.&#8221;</p>
<p>Ok, stop right there. If file-sharers are thieves on their way to the dark side, then are Netflix VPN &#8220;thieves&#8221; on their way to the dark side too?</p>
<p>Of course not, they&#8217;re paying customers who, if people like Mary Ann Turcke is lucky, will turn a blind eye to being insulted by the very people whose pockets they are lining with money.</p>
<p>It has to stop now. Shoplifting = theft. Piracy = copyright infringement.</p>
<p>Netflix+VPN = cross-border shopping in a free market &#8211; get used to it or adapt.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106584
title: There Aren’t More Horrible Backroom Deals, We’re Getting Better At Spotting Them
uri: There-Aren-t-More-Horrible-Backroom-Deals-We-re-Getting-Better-At
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/MPmGyNX2u-A/
content:
<p><img src="media/db7b975c.copyright-branded.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/copyright-branded.jpg" alt="copyright-branded" width="250" height="164" class="alignright size-full wp-image-56211">Have you heard of WCT or WPPT? Or TRIPs?</p>
<p>Odds are you haven&#8217;t.</p>
<p>But you&#8217;ve probably heard of the DMCA, EUCD, and/or InfoSoc.</p>
<p>This simple fact illustrates very quickly how much better we&#8217;ve become in just ten years. WCT is the <a href="http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/text.jsp?file_id=295166">WIPO Copyright Treaty</a>, and WPPT is the <a href="http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/text.jsp?file_id=295578">WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty</a>. They were the backroom deals from 1996 that forced the DMCA and the EUCD to happen in 1998 and 2001, respectively.</p>
<p>Once the international agreements were inked, they had to be ratified. It didn&#8217;t help too much to protest the DMCA&#8217;s rectocranialism at that point, because its principal contents had already been locked in.</p>
<p>So now that we&#8217;re spotting yet another one of these bullshit backroom deals, TISA (the Talking In Shades Agreement, which it doesn&#8217;t stand for but that&#8217;s how I like to read it), which is about curtailing the Internet and civil liberties in order to benefit big business, we know what it will lead to if we don&#8217;t kill it in time.</p>
<p>&#8230;Oh, who am I kidding? Specifying &#8220;the agreement is about curtailing the Internet and civil liberties to the benefit of big business&#8221; doesn&#8217;t clarify a bit. Every single shady backroom deal has been about that.</p>
<p>TISA &#8211; which is supposed to stand for Trade in Services Agreement &#8211; was <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/tisa-yet-another-leaked-treaty-youve-never-heard-makes-secret-rules-internet">brought to attention</a> by the EFF about ten days ago, and its contents were leaked by WikiLeaks shortly thereafter. That&#8217;s not bad. That&#8217;s getting considerably better. If we had done that with WPPT and WCT in 1993 and 1994, we wouldn&#8217;t have had the abominations of DMCA and EUCD today.</p>
<p>Not to mention the TRIPs agreement. Have you heard of that? Odds are you haven&#8217;t. It was essentially the US locking in its position as king of the hill by redefining most economic metrics so the rest of the world would be forced to pay rent. (For the interested, there&#8217;s an <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Information-Feudalism-Owns-Knowledge-Economy/dp/1595581227">excellent book</a> about how that agreement came to be. It&#8217;s worse than you think. Much worse.) It was one of the first deals where the copyright industry realized just how much rent they could extort from the public by ganging up against everybody else.</p>
<p>However, we didn&#8217;t have a developed Internet when the WCT, WPPT, or TRIPs were being drafted in the early 1990s. We do now. That&#8217;s why we were able to stop SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA. And that&#8217;s why we will be able to stop the TTIP, TPP, and this TISA abomination as well.</p>
<p>Things aren&#8217;t getting worse. What&#8217;s happening is that we have taken ourselves the right and the ability to put spotlights and sunlight on all the dirt. And this particular kind of dirt doesn&#8217;t survive sunlight.</p>
<p>The lobbyists will keep trying, for sure. For a while. They&#8217;re paid to do so, after all. Until their sponsors start noticing the nonexistent return on a considerable investment.</p>
<p>We haven&#8217;t won yet, but even though we&#8217;re digging up more dirt every year, the fact that we&#8217;re now digging up this dirt and exposing it means that we&#8217;re winning the long term.</p>
<p>After all, we have the Web and they don&#8217;t. When the Internet gangs up on the bad guy, the bad guy loses. Every single time.</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t think the copyright maximalists know how to deal with that fact.</p>
<p><center>
<div class="alignfull" style="border:2px solid #3F3F3F;width:100%;padding:15px;padding-top:8px;padding-bottom:4px;margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:10px;border-radius:10px">
<h3 style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:10px">
<div style="float:right;height:130px;width:39px;margin-left:20px;margin-right:10px"><img src="media/98818a80.Rick_Falkvinge_39x130.jpg" data-original-source="http://falkvinge.net/wp-content/themes/WpNewspaper/images/falkvinge/Rick_Falkvinge_39x130.jpg" style="border:none;-moz-box-shadow:none;-webkit-box-shadow:none" class="quimby_search_image"></div>
<p><span style="color:#3F3F3F;font-size:125%">About The</span> <span style="color:#FF3C78;font-size:125%">Author</span></p>
</h3>
<p style="font-family:PTSansRegular,Arial,Sans-Serif;font-weight:400;line-height:150%;margin-bottom:14px"><small>Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at <a href="http://falkvinge.net">falkvinge.net</a> focuses on information policy.</small></p>
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<p><small>Book Falkvinge <a href="http://falkvinge.net/keynotes/">as speaker</a>?</small></p>
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<p></center></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106604
title: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 06/08/15
uri: Top-10-Most-Pirated-Movies-of-The-Week-06-08-15
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/jaE5KPL6DFo/
content:
<p><img src="media/682036f2.ran.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/ran.jpg" alt="ran" width="300" height="244" class="alignright size-full wp-image-106607">This week we have three newcomers in our chart.</p>
<p>Run All Night 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 BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.</p>
<p><a href="http://TorrentFreak.com/category/dvdrip/feed/"><strong>RSS feed</strong></a> for the weekly movie download chart.</p>
<table class="css hover">
<thead>
<tr>
<th width="12%"><strong>Ranking</strong></th>
<th width="15%"><strong>(<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-of-the-week-060115/">last week</a>)</strong></th>
<th><strong>Movie</strong></th>
<th width="18%"><strong>IMDb Rating / Trailer</strong></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tfoot>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">torrentfreak.com</td>
</tr>
</tfoot>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><strong>1</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/run_all_night/">Run All Night</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2199571/">6.7</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uDuFh-nC-c">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>2</strong></td>
<td>(1)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kingsman_the_secret_service/">Kingsman: The Secret Service</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2802144/">8.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl8F-8tR8to">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>3</strong></td>
<td>(2)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chappie/">Chappie</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1823672/">7.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyy7y0QOK-0">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>4</strong></td>
<td>(3)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/771418863/">San Andreas Quake</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4547120/">2.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-fSiFJcw9k">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>5</strong></td>
<td>(5)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/home_2015/">Home</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2224026/">6.8</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyqZf8LiWvM">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>6</strong></td>
<td>(8)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/unfinished_business_2015/">Unfinished Business</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2358925/">5.2</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yb9Dn2mnMg">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>7</strong></td>
<td>(6)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/furious_7/">Furious 7</a> (Subbed/cropped HDRip)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2820852/">8.8</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yISKeT6sDOg">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>8</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pitch_perfect_2/">Pitch Perfect 2</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2848292/">7.0</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBwOYQd21TY">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>9</strong></td>
<td>(4)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/avengers_age_of_ultron/">Avengers: Age of Ultron</a> (CAM/TS)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2395427/">8.0</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmeOjFno6Do">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>10</strong></td>
<td>(..td></p>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/blackhat/">Blackhat</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2717822/">5.4</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ1ZDlLImF8">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106625
title: SurfTheChannel Admin Facing Jail Again Over Unpaid Piracy Debt
uri: SurfTheChannel-Admin-Facing-Jail-Again-Over-Unpaid-Piracy-Debt
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/yvfV43Zg9D8/
content:
<p>Three years after its birth in 2007, SurfTheChannel.com was among the most-visited streaming link websites on the Internet. The site enjoyed more than six million visits a day from 400,000 users who were mainly looking for the latest movies and the most popular TV shows.</p>
<p>The site soon became the focus of an MPAA investigation carried out by the UK&#8217;s Federation Against Copyright Theft. As previously documented the anti-piracy groups went to <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/undercover-mpaa-agents-expose-alleged-movie-pirates-120521/">extraordinary lengths</a> to pin down site operator Anton Vickerman and present their evidence to the police.</p>
<p>After the UK&#8217;s Crown Prosecution Service declined to take on the case, the MPAA and FACT brought a private criminal prosecution against Vickerman. Accusing him of being involved in a Conspiracy to Defraud the Movie Industry, the tactic paid off. In August 2012 <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/surfthechannel-owner-sentenced-to-four-years-in-jail-120814/">Vickerman was sentenced</a> to an unprecedented four years in jail.</p>
<p><center><img src="media/8423dcd2.surfthechannel.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/surfthechannel.png" alt="surfthechannel" width="500" height="280" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-53251"></center></p>
<p>Following an unsuccessful appeal that was rejected a year after his conviction, Vickerman was eventually freed in August 2014. But for the MPAA the matter was from over.</p>
<p>Just months later in December 2014, Vickerman was called before the courts again under the UK&#8217;s Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA). It was argued that the money Vickerman made from the site was a proceed of crime and whatever hadn&#8217;t already been disposed of must be forfeited to the state &#8211; if any could be found.</p>
<p>While Vickerman insisted that all of the money was long gone, police financial investigators said the former site operator had placed money not only in the UK, but also other countries including Spain, Latvia, Cyprus and Tanzania.</p>
<p>“Vickerman moved the money he made out of the UK and into accounts around the globe, but working closely with FACT we were able to unravel his trail of bank transfers running across international borders and demonstrate to the court that six years on this convicted criminal still had access to assets worth over £73,000,&#8221; said Claudia Celentano from the City of London Police Asset Recovery Team.</p>
<p>Following a court ruling last December which ordered Vickerman to pay back £73,055.79, the clock has been ticking for the former site operator. He now has little over a week to repay the full amount or face being thrown back into jail for a further 21 months.</p>
<p><center><strong>Surf the Channel&#8217;s Anton Vickerman</strong><img src="media/adb03f8c.vickerman-lg.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/vickerman-lg.jpg" alt="vickerman-lg" width="585" height="390" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-106632"></center></p>
<p>In desperation, Vickerman&#8217;s family and friends have launched a GoFundMe campaign to try and raise the money.</p>
<p>&#8220;As anyone who knows [Anton] personally will tell you he is a man who has been financially ruined by the legal battle with the powers against him and is not a man who has any money. Currently he lives on a council estate in the North West of England with his fiance working multiple jobs to try and put food on the table,&#8221; the appeal <a href="http://www.gofundme.com/free-anton">reads</a>.</p>
<p>&#8220;This means that on June 16 [Anton] will be sent back to prison for another ten and a half months which, when added together with his first unjust sentence brings the total to a six year prison sentence [Anton] will have served for the victimless &#8216;crime&#8217; of owning and running a search engine.&#8221;</p>
<p>If Vickerman can&#8217;t raise the money by next Tuesday, he will be sent to prison. However, that still won&#8217;t be the end of the matter. The 21 month sentence (with half deducted for good behavior) will not cancel out the requirement to settle the debt.</p>
<p>&#8220;The debt is for life and survives bankruptcy, it never goes away,&#8221; his family explain.</p>
<p>&#8220;On release [Anton] can look forward to being regularly dragged back before the courts to explain why he hasn’t paid in full, attachment of all earnings he makes, regular visits from bailiffs to seize any goods (not that he has any now having sold everything he could to pay some of the POCA debt) and, finally, further prison sentences if the UK Government decides that the interest on the debt has risen to a level that justifies more prison time.&#8221;</p>
<p>FACT declined to comment for this article but Director General Kieron Sharp previously thanked police for their assistance in the confiscation proceedings.</p>
<p>“FACT would like to thank the City of London Police for their assistance in pursuing confiscation proceedings against Anton Vickerman,&#8221; Sharp said.</p>
<p>&#8220;This private criminal prosecution produced many difficulties, not least of which was how to uncover Vickerman’s hidden criminal assets without the authorized powers of a financial investigator.&#8221;​​​​</p>
<p>Whether raising such a large sum of money in a week is a realistic proposition remains to be seen, but if Vickerman is to get any closure the debt (which is subject to interest at 8% per annum) simply has to be cleared. He&#8217;s managed to reduce it by £6,000 by &#8220;selling anything he owns of value&#8221; but that still leaves £67,000.</p>
<p>&#8220;Help us stop this never ending persecution of a man who just wants the chance to rebuild his life and start afresh,&#8221; his family concludes.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106598
title: Warner Bros. Demands Cash From “Friends” Pirates
uri: Warner-Bros-Demands-Cash-From-Friends-Pirates
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/W6cbNSmEiHI/
content:
<p><img src="media/0b0e1192.friends1.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/friends1.jpg" alt="friends" width="275" height="168" class="alignright size-full wp-image-106599">Like many other Hollywood studios, Warner Bros. sees online piracy as a major threat to its revenues.  </p>
<p>Torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay represent a thorn in the side and the company is doing everything in its power to limit the damage.</p>
<p>For Warner Bros. this includes targeting individual users of these sites. Not just to warn them that they are breaking the law, but also by demanding money from alleged pirates. </p>
<p>Just recently the Hollywood studio started sending settlement demands to Internet subscribers whose accounts were used to download and share an episode of the popular sitcom Friends.</p>
<p>While the series ended well over a decade ago, Warner Bros. is still keeping a close eye on possible infringements. In one notice, <a href="media/467c0f05.wbnotice.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/wbnotice.png">seen by TF</a>, the recipient is accused of sharing an episode from season 2, which originally <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Friends_episodes#Season_2_.281995.E2.80.9396.29">aired in 1995</a>. </p>
<p>The Hollywood studio says it &#8220;appreciates&#8221; that the alleged pirate is a fan of Friends, but notes that sharing copyrighted material is a serious offense. </p>
<p>&#8220;Although WB understands and appreciates that you are a fan of its content, the unauthorized uploading and downloading of its copyrighted content is a serious matter,&#8221; the notice reads.</p>
<p>&#8220;Your ISP service could be suspended if this matter is not resolved. You could also be liable for substantial civil penalties for copyright infringement.&#8221; </p>
<p>To resolve the matter Warner Bros. offers the account holder an opportunity to settle the case, linking to the page below where the recipient can submit a payment of $20 to avoid further trouble. </p>
<p><center><strong>Settlement offer</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/1ba37ee0.wb1.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/wb1.jpg" alt="wb" width="600" height="467" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-106614"></center></p>
<p>While $20 is relatively cheap, Warner Bros. writes that the real damage resulting from the unauthorized sharing is much higher.</p>
<p>&#8220;The damage to WB from your conduct substantially exceeds $20, but in the interest of having you stop your infringement of WB content permanently, WB is prepared to make you this settlement offer,&#8221; the notice explains.</p>
<p>Warner Bros. first started sending &#8216;fines&#8217; to U.S. Internet subscribers <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-were-fining-file-sharers-who-use-non-six-strike-isps-130607/">two years ago</a>.  At the time the Hollywood studio informed us that it was meant as a “discouragement of future unauthorized activity.”</p>
<p>However, the automated settlement offers haven&#8217;t been without controversy. Warner Bros. and Rightscorp, the company behind the scheme, have been sued for <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-denies-abuse-in-piracy-settlement-scheme-150408/">abuse and harassment</a> by several accused downloaders.</p>
<p>This is the first time that we&#8217;ve seen people being targeted for downloading video content that&#8217;s more than 20-years-old. Friends&#8217; age makes it a rather unusual target, but also suggests that Warner Bros. is still generating decent revenue from the series. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106594
title: Elsevier Cracks Down on Pirated Scientific Articles
uri: Elsevier-Cracks-Down-on-Pirated-Scientific-Articles
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/UdDCx8GU8Go/
content:
<p><img src="media/2e55b841.libhen.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/libhen.png" alt="libhen" width="299" height="150" class="alignright size-full wp-image-106658">With a net income of more than $1 billion <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier">Elsevier</a> is one of the largest academic publishers in the world. </p>
<p>Through its <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/">ScienceDirect</a> portal the company offers access to millions of scientific articles spread out over 2,200 journals. </p>
<p>Most large universities have licenses to allow staff and students to use ScienceDirect freely, but for outsiders most of the top academic publications are behind an expensive paywall.</p>
<p>In common with other content behind paywalls, there are several specialized sites that allow the general public to download pirated copies of these academic works. The Library Genesis project for example, with libgen.org and bookfi.org, as well as the search portal sci-hub.org.</p>
<p>These sites are particularly popular <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/libgen.org#trafficstats">in developing countries</a> such as Iran, India and Indonesia where access to research is not as common. However, this unauthorized use is not welcomed by academic publishers.</p>
<p>According to Elsevier the company is losing revenue because of these sites, so in order to stem the tide the publisher has filed a complaint (<a href="media/14f97b30.elsevier-complaint.pdf" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/elsevier-complaint.pdf">pdf</a>) at a New York federal court hoping to shut them down. </p>
<p>&#8220;Defendants are reproducing and distributing unauthorized copies of Elsevier’s copyrighted materials, unlawfully obtained from ScienceDirect, through Sci-Hub and through various websites affiliated with the Library Genesis Project,&#8221; the complaint reads. </p>
<p>&#8220;Specifically, Defendants utilize their websites located at sci-hub.org and at the Libgen Domains to operate an international network of piracy and copyright infringement by circumventing legal and authorized means of access to the ScienceDirect database,&#8221; it adds. </p>
<p>According to Elsevier, the websites access articles by using unlawfully obtained student or faculty access credentials. The articles are then added to the &#8220;pirate&#8221; library, backed up on their own servers. </p>
<p>Through the lawsuit the publisher hopes to obtain an injunction against the site&#8217;s operators, search engines, domain registrars and hosting companies, to take them offline as soon as possible. </p>
<p>In addition, Elsevier is requesting compensation for its losses, which could run into the millions.</p>
<p>Tom Allen, President of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), informs TF that websites such as Libgen pose a threat to the quality of scientific publications, as well as the public health.</p>
<p>“Scholarly publishers work to ensure the accuracy of the scientific record by issuing corrections and revisions to research findings as needed; Libgen typically does not,&#8221; Allen says.  </p>
<p>&#8220;As a result, its repository of illegally obtained content poses a threat to both quality journal publishing and to public health and safety.”</p>
<p>The court has yet to decide whether the injunctions should be granted, but considering outcomes in <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-domain-seizures-are-easy-in-the-united-states-150521/">recent piracy cases</a> there&#8217;s a good chance this will happen. For the time being, however, the Libgen and Sci-hub websites remain online.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106649
title: EU: Copyright Legislation is Pushing People to Piracy
uri: EU-Copyright-Legislation-is-Pushing-People-to-Piracy
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/g7uwZcYZSZM/
content:
<p><img src="media/3737aed5.europe-flag.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/europe-flag.png" width="222" height="146" class="alignright">Last month the European Commission adopted a new Digital Single Market strategy with the aim of improving consumer access to digital goods and services. Among other things the Commission says it plans to end the &#8220;discriminatory practice&#8221; of &#8220;unjustified&#8221; geo-blocking.</p>
<p>“I want to see every consumer getting the best deals and every business accessing the widest market – wherever they are in Europe,” Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/europe-will-abolish-geo-blocking-and-other-copyright-restrictions-150506/">said</a>.</p>
<p>Another part of the strategy is to modernize European copyright law to enable consumers to more easily enjoy online content, such as accessing content they purchased at home in other countries across the EU.</p>
<p>Speaking at music industry event Midem in Cannes yesterday, former Estonian prime minister Andrus Ansip who serves as Vice President for the Digital Single Market shared his vision for the strategy.</p>
<p>&#8220;Our people have to get the possibility to buy content [across Europe] like they do at home and our businesses must get the possibility to sell across the European Union like they do at home,&#8221; Ansip said.</p>
<p>&#8220;Today, we don&#8217;t have a Digital Single Market in the European Union. We have 28 relatively small markets and for small European companies it&#8217;s practically impossible to understand those 28 different [sets of] regulations.&#8221;</p>
<p>Ansip underlined that what is possible in the offline world must be possible in the online world and key issues must be addressed if parity is to be achieved.</p>
<p>&#8220;Today, the four basic freedoms in the EU &#8211; free movement of people, goods, services, capital &#8211; it&#8217;s a reality in a physical [world] but it&#8217;s not reality in the online world,&#8221; Ansip said.</p>
<p>Describing the music industry as a &#8220;pioneer&#8221; that has grown out of disruption to largely abandon geo-blocking by enabling cross-border access, Ansip addressed concerns that the EU&#8217;s plans for modernization of copyright law are something to be feared by content creators.</p>
<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think people here in this room or elsewhere have to be worried. Today, I would like to enjoy [film] masterpieces created by creators. I am ready to pay but because of copyright restrictions, because of geo-blocking, they are not accepting my money,&#8221; Ansip said.</p>
<p>&#8220;Our aim is to create a win-win situation. I would like to enjoy, I will pay, creators will get more money. This is our way. We don&#8217;t want to destroy the whole copyright system based on a principle of territoriality. We have to allow cross-border access to digital content to all people, we have to allow portability.&#8221;</p>
<p>Ansip said there are 100 million Europeans who would like to access content in other members states but they can&#8217;t because of geo-blocking. Around 271 million cross-border trips with at least one overnight stay are carried out by Europeans each year yet those people cannot always get access to the content they bought legally back home while doing so.</p>
<p>This is just one indication that the law needs to change, but piracy itself will be challenged.</p>
<p>&#8220;According to public opinion polls, 68% of film viewers say they are using [illegal] downloads. 20% of Internet users in the European Union are using VPNs to get access to digital content. That&#8217;s a huge amount of money that our creators are losing today, so of course we will pay more attention to &#8216;Follow the Money&#8217; [anti-piracy strategy],&#8221; Ansip said.</p>
<p>Assuring content holders that the EU Commission is not hostile towards copyright and rightsholders, Ansip asked the Midem audience to consider the 30% of Canadian <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">Netflix users who use a VPN</a> to access the U.S. version of the service.</p>
<p>&#8220;In the European Union our creators are losing huge amounts of money because of piracy but honestly, somehow our legislation is pushing people to steal,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>&#8220;Take Spotify, for example. We can say that if somebody is able to provide services with better quality with higher speed, then people prefer to act as honest people. They are ready to pay. They don&#8217;t want to steal.&#8221;</p>
<p>Highlighting the success of Norway in <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-collapses-as-legal-alternatives-do-their-job-130716/">slashing piracy rates</a>, Ansip says that was achieved by first offering access to quality legal services.</p>
<p>&#8220;The European Commission wants to protect the rights of creators but first we have to provide legal access to digital content to all people. Then it will be more fruitful to tackle piracy,&#8221; Ansip said.</p>
<p>When confronted with the reality that licensed services such as Spotify and Deezer exist while piracy persists, coupled with the perception that the EU Commission isn&#8217;t exactly &#8220;pro copyright&#8221;, Ansip responded enthusiastically.</p>
<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t agree with you! I&#8217;m talking about 68% of [film viewers who pirate] who couldn&#8217;t care about this copyright because we are not providing legal access to digital content,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>&#8220;Some people say that if [the EU] cares about copyright then let&#8217;s deal only with law enforcement. To put 68% of people in jail is not really a good idea. I think that reforms are really needed.&#8221;</p>
<p>It&#8217;s clear that the debate on the Digital Single Market is far from over and while it should end up as a positive for consumers, only time will tell how cooperative rightsholders will be throughout the process.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106694
title: Pirate Party Adopts Torrent Tracker to Fight Legal Pressure
uri: Pirate-Party-Adopts-Torrent-Tracker-to-Fight-Legal-Pressure
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/JRG4oSbq0nM/
content:
<p><img src="media/0e060d17.pirate_party_logo.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/pirate_party_logo.png" alt="pirate_party_logo" width="175" height="175" class="alignright size-full wp-image-49686">In recent years <a href="http://tracker.coppersurfer.tk/">Coppersurfer.tk</a> has quickly become one of the most used BitTorrent trackers.</p>
<p>Running on the beerware-licensed Opentracker software, the standalone tracker offers a non-commercial service which doesn’t host or link to torrent files itself. </p>
<p>Despite the content neutral setup, the tracker and its hosting providers have become the targets of various copyright holder groups in recent months. </p>
<p>In April, Coppersurfer was forced to leave its Dutch hosting provider following <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-torrent-tracker-knocked-offline-over-infringing-hashes-150406/">a complaint</a> from Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN. The tracker then moved its service to a German hosting provider, but that didn&#8217;t end the trouble. </p>
<p>The tracker&#8217;s operator recently informed TF that a German court ordered the tracker&#8217;s hosting provider to disclose the personal details of the associated account holder. The request came from the German lawfirm <a href="http://www.raschlegal.de/">Rasch</a>, who act on behalf of several major music labels.</p>
<p>The order (<a href="https://www.scribd.com/doc/268238955/TorrentFreak-German-Copper">pdf</a>) came as a surprise to Coppersurfer&#8217;s operator as he complied with previous takedown requests from the same lawyers, and even offered them a hash blocking tool. </p>
<p>The copyright holder, however, appeared determined to shut the site down. Facing this mounting pressure the operator decided to look for help, which he found in the Pirate Party of Greece (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party_of_Greece">PPGR</a>). </p>
<p>The Greek Pirates inform TF that they have decided to officially adopt the tracker to protect it from further threats, by any means necessary. </p>
<p>&#8220;The owner of the tracker has faced the absurd requests of the copyright lobby many times in the past, even though he was being wholly lawful. After these attacks we decided to adopt the tracker,&#8221; the PPGR board tells us.</p>
<p>&#8220;Our decision gives political support to the tracker, which is very important in this context,&#8221; they add.  </p>
<p>The party also informed the German Pirate Party and <a href="https://juliareda.eu/en/">MEP Julia Reda</a> about the recent court order, and will see if there are any options to get it overturned. Meanwhile, the tracker is hosted in another European country, operating in accordance with local laws. </p>
<p>The Greek Pirates aren&#8217;t under the illusion that the tracker will be shielded from legal pressure under their wings. However, they are prepared to fight the &#8220;copyright lobby&#8221; in order to protect the free flow of information.</p>
<p>&#8220;Unfortunately, our experience, but also our knowledge of similar cases so far predisposes us to believe that we will see this kind of incident again. But they can&#8217;t scare us. On the contrary, it gives us courage to work harder in order to achieve a free society,&#8221; the PPGR board says. </p>
<p>&#8220;A society where the exchange of ideas, files and information will be treated as what they really are: a basic human need,&#8221; they add. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106691
title: Kim Dotcom’s MegaNet Preps Jan 2016 Crowdfunding Campaign
uri: Kim-Dotcom-s-MegaNet-Preps-Jan-2016-Crowdfunding-Campaign
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/IjWKt_zpmNY/
content:
<p><img src="media/5b2669f1.dotcom-laptop.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/dotcom-laptop.jpg" alt="dotcom-laptop" width="233" height="170" class="alignright size-full wp-image-76556">For many years Kim Dotcom was associated with a crazy lifestyle but these days he prefers to be seen more as a family man.</p>
<p>Regularly <a href="https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/608388529362751488">posting pictures</a> of his children on Twitter and playing down his wild past, Dotcom seems unlikely to entertain a <a href="https://twitter.com/brokep/status/602456932050411520">recent request</a> from Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde to join him on the Gumball Rally.</p>
<p>But while yachts and fast cars might be a thing of the past, Dotcom has certainly not lost the fire in his belly when it comes to his current predicament. As he <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-thwarts-huge-u-s-govt-asset-grab-150603/">fights off</a> a ravenous U.S. government determined to bring him to justice by any means possible, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-u-s-government-used-echelon-to-spy-on-me-121009/">spying included</a>, the Megaupload founder has positioned himself as a champion of Internet privacy.</p>
<p>On January 19, 2013, Dotcom marked the anniversary of the raid on his empire by launching the privacy-focused cloud-storage service Mega.co.nz. Next year on the same date, the tenacious German says he will deliver again.</p>
<p>Thus far, details are thin on the ground, but what we do know is that Dotcom is planning a new anti-censorship network he calls MegaNet.</p>
<p>&#8220;How would you like a new Internet that can&#8217;t be controlled, censored or destroyed by Governments or Corporations?&#8221; Dotcom <a href="https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/567429236953083905">teased</a> in February.</p>
<p>MegaNet&#8217;s precise mechanism is yet to be revealed, but Dotcom has already stated that the network will be non-IP address based and that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_chain_%28database%29">blockchain</a> technology will play an important role.</p>
<p>What we also know is that users&#8217; mobile phones will play a crucial role, although at launch other devices will participate in the network.</p>
<p>&#8220;All your mobile phones become an encrypted network,&#8221; Dotcom notes. &#8220;You&#8217;d be surprised how much idle storage &#038; bandwidth capacity mobile phones have. MegaNet will turn that idle capacity into a new network.&#8221;</p>
<p>At this stage it appears that Dotcom envisions a totally decentralized system, an essential quality if he is to deliver on his claims of absolute privacy.</p>
<p>With the earlier <a href="https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/567437490441580544">promise</a> that participants in MegaNet &#8220;become the MegaNet&#8221;, Dotcom&#8217;s announcement this morning that the project will seek monetary contributions from the masses seems entirely fitting.</p>
<p>&#8220;MegaNet details will be revealed and equity will be available via crowd funding on 20 Jan 2016, the fourth anniversary of the raid [on Dotcom and Megupload],&#8221; Dotcom <a href="https://twitter.com/KimDotcom/status/608434919103209473">confirmed</a>.</p>
<p>And for now, that is all. Dotcom has become somewhat of an expert at dripping small details to the masses as and when he sees fit while allowing the media to fill in the blanks. It&#8217;s a somewhat effective strategy which provides millions in free advertising for close to zero marketing outlay.</p>
<p>The big question now is how much equity MegaNet will need to get off the ground and how many of Dotcom&#8217;s supporters will believe that privacy is a commodity worth supporting with their wallets. People were happy to support Peter Sunde&#8217;s Heml.is on the same premise, but as <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bays-peter-sunde-kills-nsa-proof-messenger-app-150424/">recently revealed</a> the amount of cash required to compete can be considerable.</p>
<p>However, Dotcom probably won&#8217;t attempt this entirely on his own. Given his history there&#8217;s a significant chance that the entrepreneur will pull in heavyweights such as Julian Assange and Glenn Greenwald to support the campaign. That will definitely help to boost the coffers.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> Kim Dotcom has sent TorrentFreak additional details on how MegaNet will operate.</p>
<p>&#8220;MegaNet has a unique file crystallization and recreation protocol utilizing the blockchain. You can load entire websites with this new technology and it makes them immune to almost all hacker attacks and ddos,&#8221; Dotcom informs TF.</p>
<p>&#8220;In the beginning MegaNet will still utilize the current Internet as a dumb pipe but in 10 years it will run exclusively on smartphones with hopefully over 500 million users carrying the network. </p>
<p>&#8220;A network by the people for the people. Not controlled by any government or corporations. MegaNet will be a powerful tool to guard our privacy and freedoms and it will also be my legacy,&#8221; Dotcom concludes.</p>
<p>On the finance front, MegaNet will partner with <a href="http://Bnktothefuture.com">Bnktothefuture.com</a> and <a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/20743/max-keisers-investment-fund-bitcoin-capital-raises-1-million-crowdfunding/">Max Keiser</a> to raise capital.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106742
title: EZTV Disappears From Google After Hostile Takeover
uri: EZTV-Disappears-From-Google-After-Hostile-Takeover
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/nkeruR6YmAI/
content:
<p><img src="media/a9c13900.eztv-logo-small1.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/eztv-logo-small1.png" alt="eztv-logo-small" width="191" height="80" class="alignright size-full wp-image-99927">After months of trouble with a hostile takeover as the climax, popular TV-torrent distribution group EZTV <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/eztv-shuts-down-after-hostile-takeover-150518/">called it quits</a> last month. </p>
<p>In the ten years since its founding the group had built up a reputation of quality and consistency, but today it is no longer active. </p>
<p>Instead, EZTV&#8217;s domain is now run by an outsider who pretends that nothing has changed. On the site&#8217;s homepage people still see the latest TV-torrents. </p>
<p>Initially these torrents were imported from other groups, but recently a person pretending to be EZTV&#8217;s Novaking announced that they had started releasing their own torrents again.</p>
<p>&#8220;We have a great news for you. [eztv] has started releasing torrents again. No more nested/unneeded files/folders you have complained about. The same quality like before.&#8221;</p>
<p>While unsuspecting users might fall for the impersonation, people in the know have cut their ties with the site. The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents, for example, are warning their users to look our for fake files and have disabled or suspended the official EZTV account.</p>
<p>But it&#8217;s not only the torrent experts who have seen through the facade, Google has too. </p>
<p>For many years the EZTV.it domain (later EZTV.ch) was the top listed result when searching for the term EZTV using Google. This is no surprise, considering that there are hundreds of thousands of backlinks to the site. </p>
<p>Interestingly, however, the &#8220;official&#8221; domain has now been completely stripped from the top results. Even several pages down the EZTV.ch domain doesn&#8217;t appear. </p>
<p><center><img src="media/85b9c0d4.eztvgoogle.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/eztvgoogle.png" alt="eztvgoogle" width="1161" height="539" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-106746"></center></p>
<p>It&#8217;s worth noting that the main EZTV.ch domain was <a href="https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/10740767">removed</a> following a takedown notice from Lionsgate. However, usually other pages on the same domain quickly take its place, as <a href="https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ncr#q=extratorrent">happened to</a> ExtraTorrent and others.</p>
<p>The absence of the EZTV domain is remarkable and stands out when comparing it to other search engines. </p>
<p>For example, roughly a week ago both Bing and DuckDuckGo continued to place EZTV.ch on top. Today, both search engines still show the domain among the top results, although no longer in first place.</p>
<p>With the site no longer being the top result in Google and elsewhere, search traffic to EZTV is minimal.</p>
<p>Whether the site&#8217;s total traffic will also go down in the long run has yet to be seen. For now the site is still among the most popular torrent sites on the Internet, and many users either don&#8217;t know or don&#8217;t care who runs the show.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106732
title: Aussie ‘Pirate’ Site-Blocking Bill Given the Green Light
uri: Aussie-Pirate-Site-Blocking-Bill-Given-the-Green-Light
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/xJ2MUd-Mm4k/
content:
<p><img src="media/dbb74c88.aus.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/aus.jpg" alt="aus" width="250" height="159" class="alignright size-full wp-image-96798">Late 2014, Attorney-General George Brandis and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull asked the Australian Cabinet to approve the development of a new system which would allow rightsholders to obtain site-blocking injunctions against ISPs. In March a draft of that legislation was <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-friendly-aussie-pirate-site-blocking-draft-unveiled-150326/">introduced to parliament</a>.</p>
<p>Since then the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015 has been under investigation by the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee. After examining the framework which allows rightsholders to apply for blocks against &#8216;pirate&#8217; sites located overseas, this morning the Committee published a report that notes four recommendations but otherwise gives the legislation a green light.</p>
<p><strong>Recommendations</strong></p>
<p>When an application is made by a rightsholder for a blocking injunction, the Bill in its current form requires the Court to consider at least eight factors when determining whether an application should be granted. These include whether a site shows a general disregard for copyright, whether it has been blocked already in another jurisdiction, and the &#8216;flagrancy&#8217; of any infringement.</p>
<p>Responding to rightsholder complaints that the bar had been set too high, alongside a belief that the thresholds for proving infringement had been narrowly established elsewhere in the Bill, the Committee advised an amendment from &#8220;<em>is to</em> take the following matters into account&#8221; to the watered down &#8220;<em>may</em> take the following matters into account&#8221;.</p>
<p>The recommendations also address VPNs, noting that &#8220;the Bill does not explicitly<br>
contemplate the introduction of injunctions against VPNs&#8221;, adding that &#8220;VPNs are unlikely to meet the &#8216;primary purpose test&#8217; [designed for infringing uses].&#8221; The Committee noted, however, that it would be &#8220;reassured&#8221; if the government clarified the status of such tools.</p>
<p>In respect of the &#8220;reasonable steps&#8221; ISPs will be expected to take in order to &#8220;disable access to an online location&#8221;, the Committee advised that these may include the posting of a landing page, similar to those currently used in the UK, which advise visitors that the site in question has been blocked alongside details of the order.</p>
<p>In another recommendation the Committee calls upon the government to provide greater clarity and guidance on the issue of costs and liability for ISPs after they comply with a court order to block a site.</p>
<p>&#8220;The committee urges the government to clarify its position regarding the<br>
attribution of costs of compliance with orders where injunctive relief is granted,&#8221; the report reads.</p>
<p>&#8220;The committee notes the persuasive evidence of service providers to the effect that as [an ISP] bears no fault or liability for the infringement of copyright by its subscribers, [the ISP] should not be required to contribute to the cost of the remedy. The committee is of the view that more clarity is required to reassure [ISPs] that the costs associated with site-blocking will primarily be borne by those parties who are seeking the remedy.&#8221;</p>
<p>In other words, if rightsholders want to benefit from a site block, they should be the ones to pay for its implementation.</p>
<p>Finally, the Committee advises that the new legislation should be given an initial 24 months to do its work. At this point it should be re-examined to assess its performance.</p>
<p>&#8220;The committee recommends that the government conduct a formal review<br>
of the effectiveness of the <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Legal_and_Constitutional_Affairs/Copyright_Bill_2015/Report">Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill2015</a>, to be completed two years after its enactment,&#8221; the Committee concludes.</p>
<p><strong>Dissenting Report &#8211; Australian Greens</strong></p>
<p>In a second report published alongside the Committee&#8217;s this morning, Senator Scott Ludlam of the Australian Greens slams the Bill as the &#8220;latest in a long line of misguided attempts by the government to monitor, control and censor the Internet.&#8221;</p>
<p>Noting that the Bill hands &#8220;significant&#8221; new censorship powers to the court, Ludlam says that the evidence shows that it will be relatively easy to bypass the Bill&#8217;s provisions. Furthermore, the Bill lacks safeguards to ensure that legitimate online sources aren&#8217;t subjected to overblocking.</p>
<p>&#8220;Most importantly, there is also a significant weight of evidence showing that<br>
the Bill will not meet its aims, as it does not address the underlying cause of online copyright infringement: The continual refusal of offshore rights holders to make their content available in a timely, convenient and affordable manner to Australians,&#8221; Ludlam concludes.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106797
title: ‘Pirate’ Android TV Box Sellers Raided By Police
uri: Pirate-Android-TV-Box-Sellers-Raided-By-Police
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/PWJQuoREIWM/
content:
<p><img src="media/86968eca.kodi.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/kodi.jpg" alt="kodi" width="200" height="200" class="alignright size-full wp-image-106816">While paying subscriptions to services such as Netflix, premium satellite and cable channels, sports broadcasters and PPV outlets are legitimate ways to obtain content on a TV, there are others that require very little outlay.</p>
<p>Apple TV boxes, Android set-top boxes and even the lowly Raspberry PI can run software such as Kodi (previously XBMC) alongside <a href="http://www.tvaddons.ag/">third-party addons</a> to provide all of the above at virtually zero cost. Unsurprisingly, this annoys content providers no end.</p>
<p>While selling any of the above devices alone is entirely legal, over the past couple of years online markets such as eBay and Amazon have been flooded with &#8220;fully loaded&#8221; boxes (Android-based in particular) that enable free viewing of anything from first run movies to live sports.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, many vendors have been happy to publicly advertise that fact, with many apparently under the impression that if they don&#8217;t provide the illegal content themselves then they aren&#8217;t liable. In the UK that argument is unlikely to fly and during the past week patience appears to have run out.</p>
<p>Earlier this week <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_Standards">Trading Standards</a> officers and police carried out raids on sellers of Android boxes setup to receive unauthorized content. One seller, operating from GeekyKit.com, told customers that his physical shops would not be trading as normal.</p>
<p>&#8220;As you may be aware we were visited yesterday by Sky [television] in conjunction with Trading Standards. Whilst we continue to investigate our position the stores will remain closed and support will remain suspended. Our sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused,&#8221; he <a href="https://www.facebook.com/GeekyKit">explained</a>.</p>
<p>&#8220;We do not control the content that is accessible on the internet via the product that we sell. We are currently working with Trading Standards to ensure that we can sell our products whilst adhering to UK copyright laws.&#8221;</p>
<p>Although no details on changes were provided by GeekyKit, the <a href="http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/police-trading-standards-joint-raid-9413857">signs</a> on the front of one of their shops will be the first thing to go after leaving little to the imagination. </p>
<p><center><img src="media/19e54c19.geeky-kit.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/geeky-kit.jpg" alt="geeky-kit" width="615" height="409" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-106798"></center></p>
<p>A source who asked to remain anonymous told TorrentFreak that raids were also carried out at home addresses. In those cases officers reportedly seized computer equipment and mobile phones. A 38-year-old man was arrested under the Copyright Designs and Patent Act.</p>
<p>The raids have certainly provided food for thought for other companies involved in the supply of similar devices. <a href="http://www.droidsticks.co.uk">DroidSticks</a>, one of the most prominent UK suppliers, is now limiting discussion on its Twitter account to matters relating only to the device.</p>
<p><center><img src="media/865e7672.droidsticks.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/droidsticks.png" alt="droidsticks" width="600" height="450" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-106811"></center></p>
<p>Whether or not the company intends to continue packaging third-party addons with its boxes will remain to be seen, but for now &#8216;pirate&#8217; talk is strictly off-limits. DroidSticks did not respond to our request for comment.</p>
<p>Finally, complying with UK legislation should be a fairly straightforward process if sellers want to play it safe, but that will probably mean never mentioning the &#8220;special features&#8221; of these boxes in a sales pitch ever again.</p>
<p>It could also mean relying on users to install their own third-party addons from scratch. It&#8217;s a simple enough process for those with patience but something unlikely to appeal to Joe Public who increasingly wants a simple plug-and-play device. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106858
title: Google Fails to Overturn Worldwide Site-Blocking Order
uri: Google-Fails-to-Overturn-Worldwide-Site-Blocking-Order
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/c3_gBNfjqpE/
content:
<p><img src="media/c89c2205.canada.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/canada.jpg" width="222" height="165" class="alignright">The prominence of Google in endless Internet-related matters often sees the company get tangled up in the disputes of others. A case from 2014 provides a particularly interesting example.</p>
<p><em>Equustek Solutions Inc. v. Jack</em> saw two Canadian entities embroiled in legal action over stolen intellectual property used to manufacture competing products. </p>
<p>Google has no direct links to the case whatsoever, yet it became sucked in when Equustek Solutions claimed that Google&#8217;s search results were helping to send visitors to websites operated by the defendants (former Equustek employees) that were selling unlawful products.</p>
<p>Google previously removed links to the sites from its Google.ca results on a voluntary basis, but Equustek wanted a broader response. In a subsequent court ruling handed in British Columbia, Google was ordered to remove the infringing websites’ listings from its central database in the United States, meaning that <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/court-hands-google-worldwide-site-blocking-injunction-140618/">the ruling</a> had worldwide implications.</p>
<p>Google was given a little under two weeks to comply with the decision but quickly appealed in the hope of achieving a better outcome. Now, a year later, the British Columbia Court of Appeal has handed down its decision and it&#8217;s more bad news for Google.</p>
<p>According to an analysis by Canadian law professor <a href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2015/06/b-c-court-of-appeal-upholds-global-deletion-order-against-google/">Michael Geist</a>, the decision addresses two key questions, both involving jurisdiction.</p>
<p>i) Whether the court has jurisdiction over Google </p>
<p>ii) Whether the injunction handed down in Canada has power outside its borders</p>
<p>On the first issue, Google argued that it does not operate servers in British Columbia, nor does it have any local offices. However, the Court decided that the company does carry out business in the region.</p>
<p>&#8220;Google does not have resident employees, business offices, or servers in the Province, but its activities in gathering data through web crawling software, in distributing targeted advertising to users in British Columbia, and in selling advertising to British Columbia businesses are sufficient to uphold the chambers judge’s finding that it does business in the Province,&#8221; the ruling <em><a href="media/29fc50a7.2015-bcca-265-equustek-solutions-inc-v-google-1.pdf" data-original-source="https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2096794/2015-bcca-265-equustek-solutions-inc-v-google-1.pdf">(pdf)</a></em> reads.</p>
<p>On the second issue &#8211; whether a court order handed down in British Columbia could have jurisdiction beyond its borders &#8211; the Court of Appeal again ruled against Google.</p>
<p>&#8220;British Columbia courts are called upon to adjudicate disputes involving foreign residents on a daily basis, and the fact that their decisions may affect the activities of those people outside the borders of British Columbia is not determinative of whether an order may be granted,&#8221; the ruling reads.</p>
<p>Noting Google&#8217;s concerns that it could potentially be &#8220;subjected to restrictive orders from courts in all parts of the world, each concerned with its own domestic law,&#8221; the court underlined the importance of exercising caution when handing down orders that have the potential to limit expression in another country. However, it found no problem with the ruling of the lower Court.</p>
<p>&#8220;In the case before us, there is no realistic assertion that the judge’s order will offend the sensibilities of any other nation. It has not been suggested that the order prohibiting the defendants from advertising wares that violate the intellectual property rights of the plaintiffs offends the core values of any nation,&#8221; the ruling reads.</p>
<p>However, should any nation have an issue with the decision, they are free to appeal, the ruling adds.</p>
<p>&#8220;In the unlikely event that any jurisdiction finds the order offensive to its core values, an application could be made to the court to modify the order so as to avoid the problem.&#8221;</p>
<p>Dismissing Google&#8217;s appeal, Justice Groberman signs off on the blocking injunction in Equustek Solutions&#8217; favor.</p>
<p>&#8220;The plaintiffs have established, in my view, that an order limited to the<br>
google.ca search site would not be effective. I am satisfied that there was a basis, here, for giving the injunction worldwide effect,&#8221; the Judge concludes.</p>
<p>Google is reportedly considering its options, with an escalation to the Supreme Court a potential (but as yet unconfirmed) outcome.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106730
title: ICANN Refuses to Play Piracy Police
uri: ICANN-Refuses-to-Play-Piracy-Police
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/dVrSLJ_I0GM/
content:
<p><img src="media/7abb2d22.cassette.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/cassette.jpg" alt="cassette" width="200" height="150" class="alignright size-full wp-image-84245">In recent years copyright holders have demanded stricter anti-piracy measures from ISPs, search engines and payment processors, with varying results.</p>
<p>Continuing this trend, various entertainment industry groups are now going after organizations that manage and offer domain name services.</p>
<p>The most influential organization in this industry is without a doubt <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN">ICANN</a>, the main oversight body for the Internet’s global domain name system.</p>
<p>Among other things, ICANN develops policies for accredited registrars to prevent abuse and illegal use of domain names. Still, various copyright groups believe that the organization isn&#8217;t doing enough.</p>
<p>In recent months the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/music-industry-demands-action-against-pirate-domain-names-130311/">RIAA</a>, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-pushes-icann-policy-changes-target-pirate-domains-150227/">MPAA</a> and other copyright industry groups have encouraged the organization to strengthen its anti-piracy policies. </p>
<p>However, ICANN is not eager to take on the role of piracy police. Earlier this week ICANN president Fadi Chehadé <a href="http://gamepolitics.com/2015/06/09/icann-we-wont-be-copyright-cops#.VXqHbPmqpBc">noted</a> that &#8220;everybody&#8221; is asking the organization to police content, which is a trend they hope to change.</p>
<p>Speaking out on the issue for the first time, ICANN&#8217;s Chief Contract Compliance Officer Allen Grogan emphasizes that they are not going to police the Internet to protect copyright holders.</p>
<p>“ICANN has no role in policing content – it’s entirely out of our scope,&#8221; Grogan informs TF.</p>
<p>&#8220;Our mission is to coordinate, at the overall level, the global Internet’s systems of unique identifiers, and in particular, to ensure the stable and secure operation of the Internet’s unique identifiers,&#8221; he adds.</p>
<p>While various copyright lobby groups suggest that ICANN has the ability and authority to take action against pirate sites, the organization itself clearly disagrees.</p>
<p>&#8220;ICANN was never granted, nor was it ever intended that ICANN be granted, the authority to act as a regulator of Internet content,&#8221; Grogan says. </p>
<p>Instead of letting the domain name industry decide what is allowed and what is not, copyright holders should fight their battles in court. According to ICANN, there are sufficient means to take on infringing sites through other venues.</p>
<p>&#8220;It’s important people understand this and direct their content complaints to the institutions that are already in place to handle these issues, such as law enforcement, regulatory agencies and judicial systems,” Grogan notes.</p>
<p>ICANN&#8217;s comments will be a disappointment to the MPAA and RIAA, who would have preferred an easy way to target the domain names of pirate sites. For now, their best option is to go through the courts, something we&#8217;re seeing <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-domain-seizures-are-easy-in-the-united-states-150521/">more and more often</a> these days.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106768
title: TV Giant CANAL+ Hacked, Hits Github With DMCA Complaint
uri: TV-Giant-CANAL-Hacked-Hits-Github-With-DMCA-Complaint
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/8rITZ0WTcqM/
content:
<p><img src="media/8c02869d.canal-logo.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/canal-logo.jpg" alt="canal+ logo" width="200" height="200" class="alignright size-full wp-image-106770">While the majority of DMCA copyright complaints are sent to hinder the online distribution of music, movies and TV shows, the legislation can also be used to deal with code and software issues.</p>
<p>Just last week, Indian blogger Thejesh GN <a href="https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150609/06505631281/guy-reveals-airtel-secretly-inserting-javascript-gets-threatened-with-jail-criminal-copyright-infringement.shtml">discovered</a> that an ISP was injecting javascript into customers&#8217; browsing sessions. This led to lawyers representing the script writers to send a DMCA notice to Github, where Thejesh GN had published the code.</p>
<p>Now Github finds itself in the spotlight again, this time over a serious matter involving one of its users and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal%2B_Group">Viacom-owned TV giant Canal+</a>.</p>
<p>The trail of the story began mid-week when Github published a DMCA notice received from the &#8220;Legal Manager&#8221; of the Industrial Protection Department of CANAL+ Group. The person, whose name was redacted, explained that he/she is in charge of anti-piracy at the company and was seeking the urgent assistance of the code repository.</p>
<p>&#8220;All the data and codes published and contained in this [<a href="https://github.com/hooperp/puppet-test/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&#038;q=kissdeploy&#038;type=Code">now deleted</a>] directory are confidential and could be used to steal personal data in our CRM [Customer Relationship Management system],&#8221; the complaint reads.</p>
<p>The Legal Manager added that the &#8216;codes&#8217; are connected to a confidential CANAL+ project titled &#8220;Kiss deploy&#8221; and asked for their urgent removal.</p>
<p>&#8220;We request you to remove immediately all the data and files contained in this repository,&#8221; the notice adds.</p>
<p><center><img src="media/9af79d0f.canal-dmca.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/canal-dmca.png" alt="canal-dmca" width="600" height="267" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-106785"></center></p>
<p>With the repository removed (shown above), CANAL+ were probably happy with Github&#8217;s response. However, there were indications that this wasn&#8217;t the first correspondence that Github had received from CANAL+ on the matter. We did some digging, were proved right, and were surprised at what we found.</p>
<p>Earlier correspondence between CANAL+ and Github obtained by TorrentFreak reveals a much more serious situation at the TV company and criminal allegations being made against the Github user.</p>
<p>&#8220;The 22d of May 20015, we had a compromission [sic] on our AWS project with an access key in order to create bitcoin. The 26th of May 2015, we have found our access key on [the above mentioned] Github repository,&#8221; the same legal manager reveals.</p>
<p>&#8220;After analysis of this repository, we can state that all the code and the secrets contained in this repository are about Canal+ project.&#8221;</p>
<p>According to the complaint, CANAL+ asked Github on four separate occasions to remove &#8220;illicit content&#8221; published on the site by a user called “hooperp” who the TV company claims has committed serious crimes against them.</p>
<p>&#8220;As we have explained, &#8216;hooperp&#8217; has hacked one of our servers and stole all the data and codes of our new CRM [Customer Relationship Management] software project: &#8216;Kiss deploy&#8217;,&#8221; CANAL+&#8217;s head of anti-piracy revealed.</p>
<p>&#8220;All the data and codes published and contained in his [now removed directory] are confidential and could be used to steal personal data in our CRM.&#8221;</p>
<p>Ouch.</p>
<p>With our efforts to track down &#8216;hooperp&#8217; stalled, we contacted CANAL+ for an official statement. That wasn&#8217;t straightforward though, with the company requiring the press to first sign up for an account.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, we did so successfully and received the following email in response. Considering the hacking allegations above, it shines unwanted light on the company&#8217;s security procedures. In case anyone is wondering, the blocked-out area hides a plain-text password. </p>
<p><Center><img src="media/0b935372.canal-plaintxt.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/canal-plaintxt.png" alt="canal-plaintxt" width="545" height="267" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-106788"></center></p>
<p>CANAL+ Group did not respond to TorrentFreak&#8217;s requests for a statement. Github declined to comment.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106208
title: Kim Dotcom’s ‘Mega Domains’ Are Now For Sale
uri: Kim-Dotcom-s-Mega-Domains-Are-Now-For-Sale
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/9p3cF_T1BAs/
content:
<p><img src="media/1220ce27.megapix.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/megapix.png" alt="megapix" width="250" height="179" class="alignright size-full wp-image-106234">When Kim Dotcom&#8217;s mansion was raided early 2012, the U.S. Government targeted various domain names that were linked to the &#8220;Mega conspiracy.&#8221; </p>
<p>While Megaupload and Megavideo were the most prominent targets, the indictment also <a href="media/de0bd628.megadomains.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/megadomains.png">listed</a> megapix.com, megacar.com, megabackup.com and various other &#8220;Mega&#8221; domains.</p>
<p>All the above sites were pulled offline as a result of the raids, and Megaupload.com and Megavideo.com displayed a banner informing visitors that the sites were under investigation. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/seized-megaupload-domains-link-to-scam-ads-and-malware-150528/">reported previously</a>, the banners vanished after the U.S. Department of Justice made a mistake, which also caused the seized Megaupload and Megavideo domains to run malicious ads.</p>
<p>After uncovering these problems with the Megaupload and Megavideo domains, we noticed something else strange. The domain name Megabackup.com was no longer listed as seized. </p>
<p>In fact, the domain is now <a href="https://megabackup.com">in use by another company</a> that offers backup solutions, similar to what Megaupload planned. </p>
<p><center><img src="media/91ccb51a.megabackup.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/megabackup.jpg" alt="megabackup" width="600" height="467" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-106853"></center></p>
<p>Baffled by this finding, we contacted the company behind the new backup service. They informed us that they are in no way affiliated with Kim Dotcom, Megaupload or its former employees.</p>
<p>&#8220;We are an independent software startup with no affiliation to MegaUpload whatsoever,&#8221; a company spokesperson said.</p>
<p>Instead, the new Megabackup simply bought the domain name through a broker after it had expired. </p>
<p>&#8220;We have acquired this domain name through a reseller platform called &#8216;Sedo&#8217; about a year ago, simply because this name looked interesting and suitable for the backup software we make.&#8221;</p>
<p>Megabackup is not the only domain that expired. The same happened to megacar.com, megagogo.com and megapix.com. The latter is currently on sale for a cool $35,000. </p>
<p>HugeDomains, the company currently selling Megagogo.com, informed us that they scooped up the domain after it had expired.</p>
<p>&#8220;When the domain was not renewed by the owner after expiration, HugeDomains acquired the domain when it became publicly available on January 22, 2015,&#8221; the company informed us.  </p>
<p>So has the U.S. Department of Justice made another mistake by letting these domains slip out of their hands? Well, not so fast. </p>
<p>While the domain names are all linked to Megaupload and mentioned in the indictment, those on sale were not officially seized unlike many others. </p>
<p>This means that anyone could have picked them up, which has also happened to Kim Dotcom&#8217;s kimpire.com domain. </p>
<p>Commenting on the situation Dotcom informs us that the domains were not supposed to expire. &#8220;This should not have happened,&#8221; he says, adding that someone else in his team handled the registrations.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106647
title: Nintendo Seizes “Pirated” Cookies to Protect Fans
uri: Nintendo-Seizes-Pirated-Cookies-to-Protect-Fans
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/PNcHP4ZNg-U/
content:
<p><a href="http://weheartit.com/entry/16148231"><img src="media/007e32d5.cookiesnintendo.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/cookiesnintendo.jpg" alt="via weheartit" width="269" height="175" class="alignright size-full wp-image-106687"></a>While not often in the news, Nintendo has a <a href="https://ap.nintendo.com/">dedicated anti-piracy division</a> that cracks down on unauthorized use of the company&#8217;s properties. </p>
<p>The anti-piracy unit keeps a close eye on Internet piracy and the sale of hacked and counterfeit products which endanger the company&#8217;s revenues. </p>
<p>However, there&#8217;s also a threat of a whole different kind: baked goods. A few months ago Nintendo spotted a surge of copyright-infringing cookies which were illicitly manufactured in China.</p>
<p>Fearing that the ingredients posed a risk to the health of gaming fans, the company decided to take swift action. </p>
<p>&#8220;After receiving a report of cookies being manufactured in China featuring Nintendo’s copyrighted characters, Nintendo took steps to protect consumers,&#8221; Nintendo announces in its quarterly update.  </p>
<p>The gaming company took its health concerns to the Chinese manufacturer and requested a halt to the baking process as soon as possible.</p>
<p>&#8220;Out of concern that unauthorized cookies could pose possible health and safety issues to consumers, Nintendo contacted the manufacturer to immediately cease manufacturing and distributing the unauthorized cookies,&#8221; the company explains.</p>
<p>This effort was successful and Nintendo reports that the manufacturer stopped producing the copyright infringing cookies, making the world a safer place for gaming fans. </p>
<p><img src="media/4e9bfbf2.marioh.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/marioh.jpg" alt="marioh" width="269" height="186" class="alignright size-full wp-image-106847"></p>
<p>In addition to crushing the pirated cookies, the company also seized more than a thousand counterfeit Super Mario products in Asia. </p>
<p>This includes the phone cover and backpack pictured on the right.</p>
<p>&#8220;Nintendo of Korea provided vital support in a seizure of more than 1,400 pieces of counterfeit Super Mario merchandise at Incheon Customs in [the first quarter of] 2015,&#8221; Nintendo reports. </p>
<p>It&#8217;s unclear whether the counterfeit goods were also health hazards, or if they were seized to protect Nintendo&#8217;s revenues instead.</p>
<p>TF contacted Nintendo for more details on the exact health threats the cookies posed, as well as other anti-piracy efforts, but the company did not respond to repeated requests for comment. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106642
title: Warner Bros. Inflate TV Show Piracy ‘Fines’ By 50%
uri: Warner-Bros-Inflate-TV-Show-Piracy-Fines-By-50
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/C_6AbE_em2o/
content:
<p><img src="media/cf05b359.warnerpirate.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/warnerpirate.jpg" alt="warnerpirate" width="190" height="109" class="alignright size-full wp-image-71657">Most companies attempting to &#8220;turn piracy into profit&#8221; seek to scare &#8216;pirates&#8217; by billing them for alleged downloads. These &#8216;fines&#8217; can reach many thousands of dollars but companies like U.S. based Rightscorp took a decision to hit the bottom end of the market with demands of just $20 per shot.</p>
<p>While this has attracted giants such as Warner Bros. <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-demands-cash-from-friends-pirates-150608/">to the fold</a>, Rightscorp can&#8217;t seem to make money. Year after year the company expands the amount of business it&#8217;s doing, but at no point has the company been able to turn a profit, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/rightscorp-still-cant-turn-piracy-into-straight-profit-150508/">quite the opposite</a> in fact.</p>
<p>Just last month after the publication of its most recent financial results, TF noted that if Rightscorp is put under severe pressure it may have to increase its $20 fines to something more practical. We didn&#8217;t have to wait long.</p>
<p>In a new notice targeting an alleged sharer of the TV show &#8216;Arrow&#8217; this week, Rightscorp delivers a message from its client Warner Bros. Noting that the company understands that the recipient is likely a fan of the show, the notice warns of serious consequences.</p>
<p>&#8220;Your ISP service could be suspended if this matter is not resolved. You could also be liable for substantial civil penalties for copyright infringement,&#8221; it reads.</p>
<p>In all previous notices seen by TF, Rightscorp asks for $20 to make a potential lawsuit disappear. However, they&#8217;re now asking for $30 for &#8220;legal release&#8221; and the opportunity to &#8220;receive future digital content offers from [Warner Bros], should you choose to receive them.&#8221; </p>
<p>At this stage it&#8217;s too early to assess whether this &#8216;pricing&#8217; change will be applied across the board or if it will have any negative effect on the numbers of people choosing to settle. However, 50% more revenue would be welcome. During the past two years Rightscorp has reportedly closed 200,000 cases of infringement &#8211; at $30 rather than $20 each that&#8217;s a potential $2m extra in revenue. </p>
<p>That being said, an additional factor concerns how much money Rightscorp will hand back to companies like Warner Bros. Previously a $20 &#8216;fine&#8217; was split 50/50, with the content holder getting $10 and Rightscorp desperately trying (and failing) to make a profit from the remaining $10. Keeping the full $10 increase would be better news for the anti-piracy company although at current rates that alone won&#8217;t be enough for it to turn its losses around. However, help is on the horizon.</p>
<p>Earlier this month Rightscorp <a href="http://ir.rightscorp.com/press-releases/detail/679/rightscorp-hires-new-cfo-former-ceo-of-publically-traded">announced</a> the appointment of a new CFO. <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=26220063&#038;ticker=ZERO">Cecil Bond Kyte</a> will oversee capital raising and investor development with the goal of &#8220;maximizing shareholder value and strengthening the company&#8217;s balance sheet.&#8221;</p>
<p>Finally, there are signs that Rightscorp may be expanding its targets. The company already sends hundreds of thousands of notices to household ISPs such as Charter and Comcast, but this week TF has seen evidence that at least one server hosting company has also received a &#8216;fine&#8217; to pass on to a customer.</p>
<p>&#8220;I am a web developer and recently my VPS was compromised by attackers who were using my VPS as a seedbox. Needless to say, I got a notice from my ISP [REDACTED] via a support ticket they opened,&#8221; a reader told TF.</p>
<p>In this case Rightscorp also asked for $30 to settle a case involving a TV show but the person targeted won&#8217;t be paying the fine. Instead he quickly informed his provider that his server had been hacked and immediately had it shut down to avoid any further issues.</p>
<p>&#8220;[Rightscorp] have no idea who I am, due to the fact that they were asking me to fill in my name, email, phone number and credit card info on their payment page!</p>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s almost like knowingly jumping in a well,&#8221; our source concludes.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106901
title: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 06/15/15
uri: Top-10-Most-Pirated-Movies-of-The-Week-06-15-15
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/AeCIC5l2pgY/
content:
<p><img src="media/4bff0fef.gethard.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/gethard.jpg" alt="gethard" width="300" height="190" class="alignright size-full wp-image-106905">This week we have three newcomers in our chart.</p>
<p>Get Hard 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 BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.</p>
<p><a href="http://TorrentFreak.com/category/dvdrip/feed/"><strong>RSS feed</strong></a> for the weekly movie download chart.</p>
<table class="css hover">
<thead>
<tr>
<th width="12%"><strong>Ranking</strong></th>
<th width="15%"><strong>(<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-of-the-week-060815/">last week</a>)</strong></th>
<th><strong>Movie</strong></th>
<th width="18%"><strong>IMDb Rating / Trailer</strong></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tfoot>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">torrentfreak.com</td>
</tr>
</tfoot>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><strong>1</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/get_hard/">Get Hard</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2561572/">6.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEqrpuU9fYI">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>2</strong></td>
<td>(1)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/run_all_night/">Run All Night</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2199571/">6.7</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uDuFh-nC-c">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>3</strong></td>
<td>(2)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kingsman_the_secret_service/">Kingsman: The Secret Service</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2802144/">8.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl8F-8tR8to">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>4</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jurassic_world/">Jurassic World</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369610/">7.7</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFinNxS5KN4">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>5</strong></td>
<td>(3)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chappie/">Chappie</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1823672/">7.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyy7y0QOK-0">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>6</strong></td>
<td>(4)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/771418863/">San Andreas Quake</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4547120/">2.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-fSiFJcw9k">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>7</strong></td>
<td>(7)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/furious_7/">Furious 7</a> (Subbed/cropped HDRip)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2820852/">8.8</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yISKeT6sDOg">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>8</strong></td>
<td>(5)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/home_2015/">Home</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2224026/">6.8</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyqZf8LiWvM">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>9</strong></td>
<td>(10)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/blackhat/">Blackhat</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2717822/">5.4</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ1ZDlLImF8">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>10</strong></td>
<td>(6)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/unfinished_business_2015/">Unfinished Business</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2358925/">5.2</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yb9Dn2mnMg">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106920
title: Game of Thrones Season Finale Breaks Piracy Records
uri: Game-of-Thrones-Season-Finale-Breaks-Piracy-Record
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/DDdzxzYzPqs/
content:
<p><img src="media/0bc92b46.got5.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/got5.jpg" alt="got5" width="250" height="168" class="alignright size-full wp-image-102724">The fifth season of Game of Thrones has been the most-viewed so far, both through official channels and among pirates. </p>
<p>With this in mind the season finale was expected to be a record breaker, and it didn&#8217;t disappoint.</p>
<p>With the Internet abuzz over the latest plot twist and turns, many people turned to torrent sites to grab a pirated copy of the show, which appeared online shortly after the broadcast ended. </p>
<p>Data gathered by TorrentFreak shows that during the first eight hours, the season finale has been downloaded an estimated 1.5 million times already. </p>
<p>Never before have we seen this many downloads in such a short period of time, and last year it took half a day to reach the same number. Based on this figure, the download count is expected to increase to more than 10 million during the days to come.</p>
<p>The lower quality 480p copies of the show remain by far the most popular among downloaders, followed by 720p and 1080p copies respectively.</p>
<p>A brief inspection of the download locations shows that Game of Thrones pirates come from all over the world, as we’ve seen <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/leaked-game-of-thrones-episodes-trigger-piracy-craze-150412/">previously</a>. The show is particularly popular in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and India.</p>
<p>While HBO began <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/hbo-targets-torrent-users-over-game-of-thrones-leak-150419/">warning individual downloaders</a> earlier this year, the piracy demand appears to keep growing. In addition to the 1.5 million downloads the latest episode is also on track to beat the piracy swarm record. </p>
<p>At the time of writing the Demonii tracker reports that 224,367 people are sharing a single torrent at the same time. 150,003 are sharing a complete copy of that particular torrent while 74,364 are still downloading.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/game-thrones-season-finale-sets-piracy-record-140616/">current record</a> stands at a quarter million active sharers, but this is usually reached later in the day. We will update this article in a few hours with an updated count.</p>
<p><em><strong>Update:</strong> At 7:45 PM CET the swarm record was broken. At that time there were 258,131 people sharing a single torrent of the season finale. 181,075 are sharing a complete copy of that particular torrent while 77,056 are still downloading. More updates may follow.</em></p>
<p><center><img src="media/5b75894c.record.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/record.png" alt="record" width="483" height="119" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-106965"></center></p>
<p>Over the past three years Game of Thrones has been the most pirated TV-show. Based on the number of downloads this season, the same result will be achieved in 2015.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106912
title: Mega Publishes First Transparency Report
uri: Mega-Publishes-First-Transparency-Report
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/bZDiPHVEBlc/
content:
<p><img src="media/7bd905c6.mega_logo.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/mega_logo.png" alt="mega_logo" width="200" height="109" class="alignright size-full wp-image-102194">For the past several years the publication of a so-called &#8216;Transparency Report&#8217; has become common on large technology focused sites. <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/reddit-rejects-62-of-all-copyright-complaints-150130/">Reddit</a>, <a href="https://transparency.twitter.com/">Twitter</a> and even <a href="http://betanews.com/2015/06/13/amazon-transparency-report/">Amazon</a> produce such documents.</p>
<p>Perhaps the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/?s=google+transparency">best known report</a> is produced by Google. This giant database is updated on a daily basis and includes details of hundreds of millions of requests by third parties to have content removed from the search giant&#8217;s databases. Today, cloud-storage site Mega gets in on the act with the publication of its first transparency report since the company launched in 2012.</p>
<p>The report, which details activities up until March 2015, focuses on content removal requests and third-party requests for information related to Mega&#8217;s users.</p>
<p>Noting that the company is New Zealand-based and is governed by the laws of that country, Mega notes that it also aims to comply with regulatory requirements in other key areas in which it does business, notably the United States.</p>
<p><strong>Copyright takedowns</strong></p>
<p>&#8220;When Mega receives such notices it promptly removes or disables access to the offending file or files, depending on the type of request, consistent with the Terms of Service agreed to by every registered user,&#8221; Mega notes.</p>
<p>Interestingly, Mega offers three options when accepting takedown requests:</p>
<p>1. Disable one link per file &#8211; the file will remain in the user&#8217;s account<br>
2. Disable multiple URLs per file &#8211; the file will remain in the user&#8217;s account<br>
3. Remove all underlying files of the supplied URL(s) &#8211; there is no user permitted to store this under any circumstance worldwide.</p>
<p>These options allow for externally linked content to be taken down while respecting fair use, for example.</p>
<p>&#8220;Many copyrighted materials provide the user with a licence to make a backup copy. Recently enacted UK law confirms this right. Uploading it to a cloud storage service is not infringing,&#8221; Mega explains.</p>
<p>Overall, the numbers of files being taken down are small when compared to the total number of files stored on the service.</p>
<p>&#8220;The number of files which have been subject to such take down notices continues to be very small, indicative of a user base which appreciates the speed and flexibility of Mega’s system for fully legal business and personal use.&#8221;</p>
<p>Mega&#8217;s claims of a &#8220;very small&#8221; number of files being taken down is supported by the company&#8217;s data. Currently the company&#8217;s users upload an impressive 15 to 20 million files per day, or more than 200 files every second.</p>
<p>During 2013 Q1, Mega took down 30,078 files, representing just 0.019% of the total number of files present on Mega&#8217;s servers. By the first quarter of 2015, files taken down numbered 107,146 but due to a further boost in total files stored, that represented just 0.002% of the company&#8217;s storage.</p>
<p>Also noteworthy is the total number of requests Mega received for the removal of content. Starting in 2013 Q1, the company received 51,857 requests but 21,779 (42%) were either duplicate or invalid. By 2015 Q1 things had improved somewhat with &#8216;just&#8217; 21% of requests rejected. However, 2014 Q4 was a particularly bad month, with more than a quarter of a million (63% of all notices sent) rejected due to being invalid or duplicate.</p>
<p><center><img src="media/a3b45cc8.mega-down.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/mega-down.png" alt="mega-down" width="600" height="331" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-106918"></center></p>
<p>Despite the large numbers of complaints received (valid or otherwise), Mega says that it deals with them all in a timely manner.</p>
<p>&#8220;The DMCA requires links to be taken down expeditiously. Most cloud providers target takedown within 24 hours. Mega targets takedown within a maximum of 4 hours, with takedowns frequently being actioned much quicker than the 4 hour target,&#8221; the report reads.</p>
<p>This timing is impressive. In a 2014 announcement, Google <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/google-to-news-corp-nobody-fights-piracy-like-us-140925/">reported</a> an average takedown time of six hours when the company took down 222 million results from Google Search in 2013.</p>
<p><strong>Repeat infringers</strong></p>
<p>With entertainment companies continuously breathing down the company&#8217;s neck, the way Mega deals with so-called &#8216;repeat infringers&#8217; is an important public barometer of the company&#8217;s attitude towards protecting copyright. </p>
<p>&#8220;Mega maintains market leading processes for dealing with users who upload and share copyright infringing material or breach any other legal requirements,&#8221; the company notes.</p>
<p>&#8220;Mega suspends the account of any user with 5 takedown actions. In some cases the account can be reinstated where it is proved to be the subject of invalid takedown notices but most suspended accounts are terminated. Up to 31 March 2015, Mega had suspended 29,213 users.&#8221;</p>
<p><center><img src="media/6ce511ec.mega-suspend.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/mega-suspend.png" alt="mega-suspend" width="600" height="346" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-106916"></center></p>
<p><strong>Requests for personal information</strong></p>
<p>Mega bills itself as &#8216;The Privacy Company&#8217; so users are likely to expect that their personal information will be as safe, if not safer, in the hands of Mega than similarly placed service providers. Mega says it values user privacy but in some cases the company will hand over information to relevant authorities when required.</p>
<p>&#8220;Privacy is not an absolute right and is subject to limitations. We take all requests for the disclosure of user information seriously. In considering any request for user data, user information or action involving a Mega user, Mega starts from the position that user data and information is private,&#8221; the company writes.</p>
<p>&#8220;Mega will generally only provide user details when required to do so by New Zealand law or a New Zealand court or law enforcement authority with appropriate jurisdiction but Mega may consider requests made by non-New Zealand law enforcement authorities and civil claimants.&#8221;</p>
<p>However, considering how many people use Mega&#8217;s services, requests for personal information are extremely low.</p>
<p>In 2013 the company received just a single request but handed over no data. In 2014 a total of six requests were received (all from overseas) and just two resulted in information being disclosed. Of that total, four requests were made by government or the police, two from corporate entities and one from a private individual.</p>
<p>&#8220;Mega respects the need to openly disclose the level of non-compliant activity of the few users who breach its Terms of Service, even though many competitors don&#8217;t disclose such information,&#8221; Mega CEO Graham Gaylard informs TorrentFreak.</p>
<p>&#8220;Mega works very hard to ensure that the legitimate rights of content owners are respected.”</p>
<p>The full report can be found <a href="https://mega.co.nz/#blog_35">here</a>.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106925
title: Innocent Cox Subscribers Dragged into Piracy Lawsuit
uri: Innocent-Cox-Subscribers-Dragged-into-Piracy-Lawsuit
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/FaM8uv8JGTQ/
content:
<p><img src="media/f2bfe741.pirate-running.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/pirate-running.jpg" alt="pirate-running" width="222" height="204" class="alignright size-full wp-image-78717">Last year BMG Rights Management and Round Hill Music sued Cox Communications, arguing that the ISP fails to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.</p>
<p>The companies, which control the publishing rights to songs by Katy Perry, The Beatles and David Bowie among others, claim that Cox has given up its DMCA safe harbor protections due to this inaction.</p>
<p>The case revolves around the “repeat infringer” clause of the DMCA, which prescribes that Internet providers must terminate the accounts of persistent pirates.</p>
<p>As part of the discovery process the music outfits requested details on the accounts which they caught downloading their content. In total there are 150,000 alleged pirates, but the court limited the initial disclosure to the top 250 infringing IP-addresses in the six months before the lawsuit was filed.</p>
<p>Although the copyright holders provided time-stamps of the alleged infringements, Cox responded quite literally to the court order. This means that in addition to historical account information, they also handed over the personal details of current subscribers.</p>
<p>In a recent court filing Cox explains the disclosure is not a mistake (<a href="media/cd7dd02c.coxclar.pdf" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/coxclar.pdf">pdf</a>), and the ISP says it informed the current account holders that their information will be handed over to the music companies.</p>
<p>In a letter informing the subscribers, Cox says that customer service is not allowed to assist them and that subscribers should contact a lawyer instead.</p>
<p>&#8220;We regret being placed in the position of sending this  letter, but want you to have every opportunity to protect your interests. We are not permitted to give you legal advice and encourage you to consult an attorney immediately,&#8221; Cox writes. </p>
<p><center><img src="media/07366335.coxletter.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/coxletter.jpg" alt="coxletter" width="600" height="702" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-106930"></center></p>
<p>Many of the current subscribers are surprised to be included and 32 have indicated that they object to having their personal data handed over. </p>
<p>One of the subscribers asked the court to limit the scope of the order to the time-frame when the actual infringements took place, noting that he or she wasn&#8217;t even a Cox customer when the files were shared.</p>
<p>&#8220;Cox intends to produce the personal account information of all customers assigned to the IP-addresses in question — even those who were not subscribers to Cox during the relevant time periods listed in the discovery request!&#8221; </p>
<p>&#8220;This broad reading of the Court&#8217;s Order could drag dozens of innocent parties into this litigation,&#8221; the subscriber notes.</p>
<p><center><img src="media/39f0bf8d.objectcox.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/objectcox.jpg" alt="objectcox" width="600" height="389" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-106935"></center></p>
<p>Thus far Cox has not handed over any information related to subscriber who objected, awaiting further instructions from the court. However, the personal details of the other 216 account holders has already been disclosed.</p>
<p>In addition to the current subscribers Cox also matched 139 historical IP-addresses to the relevant personal details. Aside from 17 customers who objected, these details were handed over as well.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s unclear why Cox didn&#8217;t raise the issue of the current subscribers in court before disclosing their details. The information holds no value to the music companies who requested it, but is quite a burden to the account holders.</p>
<p>The music companies previously stated that they don&#8217;t intend to sue any individual subscribers, but several are unaware of this promise and fear getting caught up in an expensive legal battle.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106971
title: Amazon Bans Kodi/XBMC App Over Piracy Concerns
uri: Amazon-Bans-Kodi-XBMC-App-Over-Piracy-Concerns
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/HBRpVjW7FWI/
content:
<p><img src="media/3f5b59a8.kodilogo.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/kodilogo.jpg" alt="kodilogo" width="250" height="100" class="alignright size-full wp-image-107000">Taking “infringing” apps out of popular app stores is one of Hollywood’s <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/leak-exposes-hollywoods-global-anti-piracy-strategy-141212/">key anti-piracy priorities</a> for the years to come.</p>
<p>Various entertainment industry groups frequently report “piracy-enabling” apps to Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon, alongside requests for the stores to take them offline.</p>
<p>The stores themselves also screen for potentially problematic software. Apple, for example, has notoriously banned all BitTorrent related apps.</p>
<p>Increasingly, Amazon is also policing its app marketplace for possibly infringing content. A few days ago, this led to the removal of the <a href="http://kodi.tv/">popular media center Kodi</a>, previously known as XBMC. </p>
<p>&#8220;In reviewing your app, we determined that it can be used to facilitate the piracy or illegal download of content. Any facilitation of piracy or illegal downloads is not allowed in our program,&#8221; Amazon <a href="http://www.aftvnews.com/amazon-appstore-removed-kodi-for-false-reputation-of-facilitating-piracy-while-google-play-store-approves-kodi/">wrote to Kodi</a>.</p>
<p>&#8220;Please do not resubmit this app or similar apps in the future,&#8221; Amazon&#8217;s support team added.</p>
<p>TF spoke with <a href="http://kodi.tv/about/xbmc-foundation/">XBMC Foundation</a> board member Nathan Betzen, who was surprised to hear Amazon&#8217;s decision. In recent months the project has worked hard to distance their brand from piracy, so Amazon&#8217;s accusation is a huge disappointment. </p>
<p>The Kodi software itself is an entirely legal media center that doesn&#8217;t come with any infringing features or content. However, there are many third-party addons that allow users to stream pirated movies and TV-shows.</p>
<p>The Kodi team is <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/xbmckodi-targets-piracy-promoting-ebay-sellers-141101/">actively pursuing</a> infringing addons and sellers who abuse the brand, and is also trying to obtain a trademark so they can go after these piracy promoters more effectively.</p>
<p>&#8220;Most importantly, we&#8217;re working to finalize our trademark filing. Once our trademark is registered, it becomes dramatically easier to issue takedown requests with the various organizations that provide voice for these groups advertising and selling pirate boxes,&#8221; Betzen tells TF. </p>
<p>&#8220;We always say we don&#8217;t care what our users do with the software, and we stand by that position. But we sure do hate it when companies destroy the name of our software in order to make a profit.&#8221;</p>
<p>For Amazon to ban the app is &#8220;absurd&#8221; according to the Kodi team, because the company is still allowing vendors to sell boxes that are giving the software this bad reputation.</p>
<p>&#8220;I assume I don&#8217;t have to tell you how absurd it is that Amazon won&#8217;t let us into their appstore, but they have no problem selling the boxes that are pushing the reason they won&#8217;t let us into their app store,&#8221; Betzen says.</p>
<p>Removing Kodi may also hurt Amazon in the long run, according to Betzen. The application allowed many other third-party services that are currently not on Amazon, available to Amazon Fire TV and Amazon Fire TV Stick users.</p>
<p>&#8220;This is a bad decision on Amazon&#8217;s part simply because Kodi is one giant reason people buy Amazon Fire TVs and Amazon Fire TV Sticks. Compatibility with our software makes for a really simple backdoor for entering the Amazon ecosystem.&#8221; </p>
<p>&#8220;I personally have sideloaded Kodi onto Amazon sticks for a number of my family members, who then found themselves also using Amazon Prime and many other Amazon services,&#8221; he adds. </p>
<p><center><img src="media/f8eb08b3.kodiandroid.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/kodiandroid.jpg" alt="kodiandroid" width="790" height="465" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-106978"></center></p>
<p>Coincidentally, around the same time Amazon booted Kodi from their market, Google decided to <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.xbmc.kodi">include it in the Play Store</a>. According to the Kodi team this is yet another reason for people to leave Amazon hardware behind.</p>
<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s going to be extraordinarily difficult for Kodi users to justify going down the Amazon hardware path and recommending the Amazon path to others,&#8221; Betzen concludes. </p>
<p>People who are interested in trying out Kodi&#8217;s media player, which is available on most operating systems, can head over to the <a href="http://kodi.tv/download/">official site</a>. </p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> Several people have <a href="http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=229728&#038;pid=2030145#pid2030145">pointed out</a> that many Kodi/XBMC related apps that have &#8220;pre-loaded&#8221; piracy addons (including the popular TVMC) are still available on Amazon. </p>
<p>It seems likely that Amazon doesn&#8217;t take apps down proactively but that they only investigate apps after rightsholder complaints. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106961
title: Man Pleads Guilty to Costing Film Industry “Millions” Through Piracy
uri: Man-Pleads-Guilty-to-Costing-Film-Industry-Millions-Through-Pira
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/OBKCKhBmD6k/
content:
<p><img src="media/4eac09ea.fastpasstv.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/fastpasstv.jpg" alt="fastpasstv" width="180" height="169" class="alignright size-full wp-image-106987">In May 2011, police <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/police-seize-83000-in-internet-piracy-raid-110527/">reported</a> seizing £83,000 and computer equipment following a raid in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The operation was a culmination of an investigation carried out by the Hollywood-funded anti-piracy group Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT).</p>
<p>By the end of the month more details began to emerge, with TorrentFreak sources <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/fastpasstv-shuts-down-110529/">confirming</a> that an operator of video streaming site known as &#8216;FastPassTV&#8217; had been arrested. </p>
<p>With hundreds of thousands of daily visitors the site was a significant player in the streaming market. However, FastPassTV did not store any content of its own, instead linking to movies hosted elsewhere.</p>
<p>“Fast Pass TV does not host, store, or distribute any of the videos listed on the site and only link to user submitted content that is freely available on the Internet,” a notice on the website read.</p>
<p><Center><img src="media/eb2b4f8e.fastpasseu.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/fastpasseu.jpg" width="496" height="297" class="alignnone"></center></p>
<p>Somewhat typically the case dragged on through the legal system and it took more than four years to come to court. However, the case was more complex than it first appeared.</p>
<p>At his <a href="http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/man-denies-uploading-movies-illegally-30968500.html">arraignment</a> in February 2015, Paul Mahoney from Carnhill, Londonderry, was not only charged with offenses connected with FastPassTV but also BedroomMedia, a <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20080606194719/http://www.bedroommedia.com/">discussion and linking forum</a> he also operated. It&#8217;s alleged that the man generated £82,390 in advertising revenue from the criminal operation of both sites.</p>
<p>Mahoney was also charged with two further offenses of conspiring with individuals known online as &#8216;Hunter Grubbs&#8217; and &#8216;ADigitalOrange&#8217; to defraud the movie industry. The 28-year-old pleaded not guilty to all charges and was bailed to appear at a later date.</p>
<p>This week, however, Mahoney was back in court with an apparent change of heart, pleading guilty to all four charges. In what&#8217;s being described as the first prosecution of its type in Northern Ireland, Mahoney was re-arraigned Monday.</p>
<p>He pleaded guilty to a charge that between April 2008 and May 2011 he conspired with others to operate websites which allow the public to view copyrighted movies without permission from rightsholders.</p>
<p>Mahoney also pleaded guilty to a charge of generating £82,390 in advertising revenue between April 2010 and April 2013 from this websites FastPassTV and BedroomMedia.</p>
<p>Finally, the 28-year-old pleaded <a href="http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/man-denies-uploading-movies-illegally-30968500.html">guilty</a> to the charge of conspiring with &#8216;Hunter Grubbs&#8217; and &#8216;ADigitalOrange&#8217; between May 2011 and April 2013.</p>
<p>&#8220;Paul Mahoney operated websites over a number of years which knowingly provided illegal access to thousands of films, generating significant income for himself and causing the film industry millions of pounds of loses,&#8221; Kieron Sharp, Director General of FACT, informs TorrentFreak.</p>
<p>Unusually, however, there will be no claim for compensation. FACT hopes that Mahoney&#8217;s prosecution alone will send a clear message to others thinking of embarking on the same line of business.</p>
<p>&#8220;Websites of this kind cause untold harm to the UK&#8217;s creative industries. We hope that this prosecution will serve as a deterrent to others engaging in this type of criminality, and look forward to Mr Mahoney&#8217;s sentencing on 25th August,&#8221; Sharp concludes.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106910
title: Pirate Bay’s Gottfrid Svartholm Loses Hacking Appeal
uri: Pirate-Bay-s-Gottfrid-Svartholm-Loses-Hacking-Appeal
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/cSVnE6jUWLc/
content:
<p><img src="media/2ae4dc32.gottfrid.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/gottfrid.jpg" alt="gottfrid" width="174" height="222" class="alignright size-full wp-image-10141">Two years after being arrested in his Cambodian apartment in September 2012, Gottfrid Svartholm went on trial in Denmark.</p>
<p>The Pirate Bay founder and a 21-year-old co-defendant stood accused of hacking computer mainframes operated by US IT giant CSC. It was billed as the largest case of its kind ever seen in the Scandinavian country.</p>
<p>Right from the outset Gottfrid&#8217;s position was that his computer, from where the hacking had taken place, had been compromised by outside attackers. Respected security expert Jacob Appelbaum <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/jacob-appelbaum-gives-testimony-in-gottfrid-svartholm-trial-140914/">gave evidence</a> for the defense in support of this theory. However, the court was not convinced.</p>
<p>Dismissing the &#8220;remote control&#8221; defense, Judge Ulla Otken described the hacking of CSC as both “systematic and comprehensive.” Three judges and four of six jurors <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/gottfrid-svartholm-found-guilty-in-hacking-trial-141030/">returned guilty verdicts</a> in 2014 and Gottfrid was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison.</p>
<p>Never one to give up, Gottfrid immediately filed an appeal and this month his case came before the Eastern High Court. According to local media, whose coverage has been much less intense than when the Swede went on trial last year, the evidence presented by both sides was of a highly technical nature.</p>
<p>Writing earlier this week for <a href="http://www.version2.dk/artikel/manglende-teknisk-indsigt-udfordrer-historisk-hackersag-i-landsretten-245247">Version2.dk</a>, Elías Lundström reported that even as an IT journalist he had difficulty in following the evidence, a sentiment shared by Gottfrid&#8217;s mother.</p>
<p>&#8220;I also have trouble understanding it &#8211; how should any of the jurors be able to follow the evidence?&#8221; Kristina Svartholm said.</p>
<p>Gottfrid&#8217;s lawyer Luise Høj also underlined the difficulty in dealing fairly with such a complex case.</p>
<p>&#8220;I think overall that progress continues to be characterized by the fact that we all lack the technical knowledge to deal with this matter, and it characterizes the whole process,&#8221; she said.</p>
<p>Whether the complexity of the case affected the jury will be a matter for future debate, but a few moments ago all three judges and all nine jurors upheld the District Court&#8217;s decision handed down last October.</p>
<p>Addressing the &#8220;remote access&#8221; defense, the High Court ruling notes that it would be unlikely that Gottfrid&#8217;s computer could be accessed without him noticing it. Furthermore, the Court found it unusual that the Swede refused to assist police in getting to the bottom of the crime.</p>
<p>While the <a href="http://arbejderen.dk/node/160232">guilty</a> verdict will undoubtedly come as a disappointment to Gottfrid himself, his mother Kristina &#8211; who has endured two court cases and numerous trips to Denmark in support of her son &#8211; has been openly critical of the entire process. </p>
<p>In a series of tweets this week she complained of how the case has been handled, from its roots in <a href="https://twitter.com/KSvartholm/status/610491531536003072">Cambodia</a>, via <a href="https://twitter.com/KSvartholm/status/610493043515506688">Sweden</a> and ultimately to <a href="https://twitter.com/KSvartholm/status/610489924152901632">Denmark</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> The High Court has just announced that Gottfrid&#8217;s original sentence of 3.5 years will stand.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107010
title: MPAA: Google Assists and Profits from Piracy
uri: MPAA-Google-Assists-and-Profits-from-Piracy
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/QtdH1CVq0yM/
content:
<p><img src="media/3a6fa524.google-bay.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/google-bay.jpg" alt="google-bay" width="200" height="177" class="alignright size-full wp-image-21875">Late last year <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/google-mpaa-publicly-slam-each-other-over-piracy-141219/">leaked documents</a> from the Sony hack revealed that the MPAA helped Mississippi State Attorney General Hood to revive SOPA-esque censorship efforts in the United States.</p>
<p>In a retaliatory move Google sued the Attorney General, hoping to find out more about the secret effort. As part of these proceedings Google also demanded internal communication from the MPAA, but the Hollywood group has been hesitant to share these details.</p>
<p>After several subpoenas remained largely unanswered <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/google-takes-mpaa-to-court-over-secret-censorship-plans-150603/">Google took the MPAA to court</a> earlier this month. The search giant asked a Columbia federal court to ensure that the MPAA and its law firm Jenner &#038; Block hands over the requested documents.</p>
<p>The MPAA and its law firm responded to the complaint this week, stressing that Google&#8217;s demands are overbroad. They reject the argument that internal discussions or communications with its members and law firm will reveal Attorney General Hood’s intent, not least due to the Attorney General not being part of these conversations himself.</p>
<p>According to the Hollywood group, Google&#8217;s broad demands are part of a public relations war against the MPAA, one in which Google inaccurately positions itself as the victim.</p>
<p>&#8220;Google portrays itself as the innocent victim of malicious efforts to abridge its First Amendment rights. In reality, Google is far from innocent,&#8221; the MPAA informs the federal court (<em><a href="media/88ee831a.MPAAgoogle.pdf" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/MPAAgoogle.pdf">pdf</a></em>).</p>
<p>The MPAA notes that Google is knowingly facilitating and profiting from distributing &#8220;illegal&#8221; content, including pirated material.</p>
<p>&#8220;Google facilitates, and profits from, the distribution of third-party content that even Google concedes is &#8216;objectionable.&#8217; &#8216;Objectionable&#8217; is Google’s euphemism for &#8216;illegal&#8217;,&#8221; the MPAA writes.</p>
<p>The opposition brief states that for a variety of reasons the subpoenaed documents are irrelevant to the original lawsuit and are far too broad in scope. The MPAA&#8217;s initial searches revealed that 100,000 documents would likely require review, many of which it believes are protected by attorney-client privilege. </p>
<p>The MPAA says that Google is trying to leverage the information revealed in the Sony hack to expose the MPAA&#8217;s broader anti-piracy strategies in public, and that this is all part of an ongoing PR war. </p>
<p>&#8220;The purpose of these Subpoenas is to gather information — beyond the information that was already stolen via the Sony hack on which it relies — on the MPAA’s strategies to protect its members’ copyrighted material and address violations of law on the Internet affecting its members’ copyrights and the rights of others,&#8221; they write. </p>
<p>&#8220;Moreover, Google openly admits that it opposes any order to keep these discovery materials in confidence, revealing its goal to disseminate these documents publicly as part of its ongoing public relations war.&#8221; </p>
<p>Positioning itself as the victim, the MPAA goes on to slam Google for going after anyone who &#8220;dares&#8221; to expose the search engine&#8217;s alleged facilitation of piracy and other unlawful acts.</p>
<p>&#8220;&#8230;the most fundamental purpose of these Subpoenas is to send a  message to anyone who dares to seek government redress for Google’s facilitation of unlawful  conduct: If you and your attorneys exercise their First Amendment right to seek redress from a government official, Google will come after you.&#8221; </p>
<p>In conclusion, the MPAA and its law firm ask the court to reject Google&#8217;s broad demands and stop the &#8220;abuse&#8221; of the litigation process. </p>
<p>It&#8217;s now up to the judge to decide how to proceed, but based on the language used, the stakes at hand and the parties involved, this dispute isn&#8217;t going to blow over anytime soon. It&#8217;s more likely to blow up instead.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107029
title: Netflix VPN Problem? Leave Consumers Alone, Aussie Minister Says
uri: Netflix-VPN-Problem-Leave-Consumers-Alone-Aussie-Minister-Says
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/0tAvPVLjhHo/
content:
<p><img src="media/dbb74c88.aus.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/aus.jpg" alt="aus" width="250" height="159" class="alignright size-full wp-image-96798">After struggling with the issue of online piracy for many years, last week the Australian parliamentary committee investigating the government&#8217;s &#8216;pirate&#8217; site-blocking Bill gave the legislation the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/aussie-pirate-site-blocking-bill-given-the-green-light-150611/">green light</a>.</p>
<p>After Coalition and Labor senators <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/article/labor-falls-in-to-support-piracy-site-blocking-bill/">endorsed</a> the Bill with four modifications, it is now guaranteed to become law.</p>
<p>Last evening the Bill passed the Australian House of Representatives but while doing so provoked interesting comment from Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull on the issue of VPN use.</p>
<p>Noting that there is no &#8220;silver bullet&#8221; to deal with Internet piracy, Turnbull said that the Bill contains a number of safeguards and amendments designed to protect &#8220;public and private interests&#8221;, including the use of VPNs that are promoted or used for legitimate purposes.</p>
<p>&#8220;VPNs have a wide range of legitimate purposes, not least of which is the preservation of privacy — something which every citizen is entitled to secure for themselves — and [VPN providers] have no oversight, control or influence over their customers&#8217; activities,&#8221; Turnbull said.</p>
<p>The Communications Minister went on to give the example of an Australian consumer using a VPN to &#8216;trick&#8217; a U.S.-based site into thinking they were located inside the United States.</p>
<p>&#8220;This Australian could then — and this is widely done — purchase the content in the normal way with a credit card. The owner of the Australian rights to the content so acquired might well be quite unhappy about that, but they could take a remedy against the American site or the underlying owner of the rights. This bill does not apply to a site like this. It is not intended to apply to VPNs,&#8221; Turnbull confirmed.</p>
<p>There are key reasons why the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015 does not apply to VPN use, but for clarity&#8217;s sake, Turnbull spelled them out.</p>
<p>&#8220;Where someone is using a VPN to access, for example, Netflix from the United States to get content in respect of which Netflix does not have an Australian licence, this bill would not deal with that, because you could not say that Netflix in the United States has as its primary purpose the infringement, or facilitation of the infringement, of copyright,&#8221; the Minister said.</p>
<p>Indeed, for this scenario to be covered by the legislation then Netflix and/or the VPN provider would need to show a general disregard for copyright and meet several of at least eight criteria laid out in the Bill, including demonstrating &#8220;flagrant&#8221; infringement.</p>
<p>Turnbull went on to make it clear that if local entertainment companies have a problem with Australians utilizing VPNs to obtain a better content offering, then they should direct their grievances overseas and leave the man in the street alone.</p>
<p>&#8220;If Australian rights owners have got issues about American sites selling content to Australians in respect of which they do not have Australian rights, they should take it up with them. The big boys can sort it out between themselves and leave the consumers out of it,&#8221; Turnbull said.</p>
<p>Finally, the timely delivery of quality content at a fair price has always been a problem in Australia and one of the key local drivers behind both piracy and the VPN &#8216;problem&#8217;. Thankfully the issue was underlined by the Communications Minister who noted that blocking alone would not solve the country&#8217;s problems.</p>
<p>&#8220;The bill is not intended to operate in a vacuum. The availability of content that is timely and affordable is a key factor in the solution to online copyright infringement,&#8221; Turnbull said.</p>
<p>&#8220;When infringing sources of content are disrupted, this disruption will be most effective if Australian consumers have legitimate sources to turn to that provide content at competitive prices and at the same time that it is available overseas.&#8221;</p>
<p>Whether that situation comes to pass is up to the entertainment industries but if grand efforts aren&#8217;t made, Aussies will use their VPNs not only to access Netflix, but also evade every site blocking measure this legislation hopes to impose.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107012
title: Pirate Bay Domains No Longer Accessible Through ‘WWW’
uri: Pirate-Bay-Domains-No-Longer-Accessible-Through-WWW
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/hmUQGHkwOIE/
content:
<p><img src="media/2a43984f.pirate-bay.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/pirate-bay.jpg" alt="pirate bay" width="200" height="207" class="alignright size-full wp-image-53470">The Pirate Bay has had its fair share of legal problems and technical difficulties over the years. </p>
<p>Just last month a Swedish court ordered the <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/key-pirate-bay-domains-must-be-seized-court-rules-150519/">seizure</a> of site&#8217;s main .se domain name. This case is currently on appeal but in the meantime TPB is <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-moves-to-gs-la-vg-am-mn-and-gd-domains-150519/">rotating several new domains</a>. </p>
<p>A few days ago, however, reports started rolling in that the notorious torrent site is no longer accessible to some, across all domains. </p>
<p>Instead of the usual homepage visitors see an <a href="https://www.thepiratebay.la/">error message</a> in their browser, suggesting that the DNS lookup failed. </p>
<p>Luckily enough, the problems are only affecting URLs with a www prefix. For some reason, the corresponding DNS entries have been removed rendering all www links inaccessible.</p>
<p><center><img src="media/c3330d2c.tpbdns.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/tpbdns.png" alt="tpbdns" width="608" height="329" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-107070"></center> </p>
<p>While it&#8217;s quite common for websites not to use the www prefix (<a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">we don&#8217;t</a>), there&#8217;s usually a redirect setup so visitors are directed to the correct URL. </p>
<p>Since TPB doesn&#8217;t have a redirect set up, many people are inaccurately assuming that the site is suffering downtime.</p>
<p>For now it remains a mystery why the DNS entries were updated. TF spoke with a moderator of the site, who told us that he and his team were not informed about the changes.</p>
<p>The dropped www prefix is not the only issue The Pirate Bay has been facing recently. Over the past weeks several parts of the site broke temporarily, including user registrations and torrent uploads. </p>
<p>To inform users about these and other technical difficulties, the TPB crew has a <a href="https://pirates-forum.org/misc.php?page=tpbstatus">status page </a>showing which services are up and running. This page is maintained by the moderators and separately hosted at the Suprbay forum.</p>
<p>As shown below, all crucial features are fully operational at the time of writing. That is, if users have dropped the www prefix from their bookmarks. </p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> strangely enough www.thepiratebay.se started resolving again, without a redirect. The other domains are still www-less.</p>
<p><center><strong>TPB status</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/073e1344.tpbstatus.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/tpbstatus.png" alt="tpbstatus" width="619" height="344" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-107064"></center></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107081
title: Trolls Want to Interrogate BitTorrent ‘Pirates’ By Phone
uri: Trolls-Want-to-Interrogate-BitTorrent-Pirates-By-Phone
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/rmTL2wqjpgE/
content:
<p><img src="media/d45c68ed.dallas.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/dallas.jpg" width="180" height="180" class="alignright">Following prolonged legal action in Australia, the company behind the hit movie Dallas Buyers Club was <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/iinet-loses-dallas-buyers-club-piracy-case-150407/">given permission</a> to chase down individuals said to have downloaded the movie illegally.</p>
<p>An estimated 4,726 internet account holders will be targeted under the legal action and all will come under considerable pressure to pay Voltage Pictures a cash settlement to make a supposed lawsuit go away. Somewhat surprisingly, it has now emerged that the movie company will not only target people via letter, but will also phone account holders to interrogate them in person.</p>
<p>During a Federal Court hearing today it was revealed that Dallas Buyers Club (DBC) have prepared a script which details several questions the company intends to ask its targets. Shockingly they include requests for individuals to reveal how much they earn each year and how many movies they have previously shared using BitTorrent. </p>
<p>ISP iiNet, whose customers are targeted in the action, say that &#8216;fines&#8217; should be as little as $5, but DBC wants to charge individuals variable amounts based on their income, how damaging their sharing of Dallas Buyers Club was, and how much infringement they have been involved in during the past.</p>
<p>Richard Lancaster SC, representing iiNet, <a href="http://www.afr.com/business/legal/judge-seeks-assurance-dallas-buyers-club-wont-extort-downloaders-20150618-ghr5eq">said</a> the script &#8220;comes on too strong&#8221; and is too broad in scope.</p>
<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s no justification for getting into a royal commission into end users&#8217; use of the BitTorrent network,&#8221; Mr Lancaster said. &#8220;It&#8217;s about the film.&#8221;</p>
<p>Lancaster also complained that the texts of both the script and letter imply that guilt of copyright infringement had already been established when in fact that is not the case.</p>
<p>&#8220;The people on the phone aren&#8217;t told, &#8216;We&#8217;ve been given your details in respect to a court order,&#8221; he <a href="http://www.cnet.com/au/news/dallas-buyers-club-what-do-you-earn-how-much-do-you-torrent/">said</a>. &#8220;They are being told much more firmly, &#8216;You have infringed and we are going to sue if you don&#8217;t settle&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
<p>How much DBC will demand from alleged infringers is unknown, but it seems inevitable that anything said on the telephone by an account holder will be used against them in a bid to boost the amount. Counsel for DBC, Ian Pike SC, said that it will be up to the individual whether they choose to answer the company&#8217;s questions.</p>
<p>While most lawyers will advise anyone getting a call from DBC to tell the company absolutely nothing, the movie company is keen for its targets to be unprepared.</p>
<p>Firstly, DBC is refusing to reveal how it will calculate the amount each person will be asked to pay. However, it is believed the company will seek some kind of licensing fee and/or damages based on how many times the content was shared online, plus relevant court costs. Alternatively, DBC might simply arrive at the highest figure it can reasonably expect to retrieve from the alleged infringer based on what the company is told on the telephone.</p>
<p>However, people being targeted by the company won&#8217;t be going into their &#8216;negotiations&#8217; completely blind. Despite expressing concern that people will read their contents and learn how to reduce the claim against them, on the orders of Judge Nye Perram, DBC will be required to submit the texts of both their telephone script and settlement demand letters to the court.</p>
<p>A final judgment on the case is expected between July 10 and 15.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107144
title: Porn Time For Android Debuts After Huge Desktop Success
uri: Porn-Time-For-Android-Debuts-After-Huge-Desktop-Success
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/xReuXBFLlSk/
content:
<p><img src="media/ce2d7a78.porntime.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/porntime.png" alt="porntime" width="211" height="121" class="alignright size-full wp-image-106264">After becoming a smash hit with viewers of mainstream movies for more than a year, earlier this month a new version of Popcorn Time thrust onto the scene.</p>
<p>Titled <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/now-theres-a-popcorn-time-for-porn-too-150606/">Porn Time</a>, this hot variant allows users to access a wide range of adult content pulled from <a href="http://pornleech.com/6962_voldemor.html">Pornleech</a>, the largest public adult oriented BitTorrent tracker.</p>
<p>With the ability to cast directly to big screens using Chromecast, Airplay or DLNA, Porn Time was always destined for success, but new figures reveal that the software has exceeded all expectations.</p>
<p>According to the people behind the project, in the week following its release the software was downloaded an impressive 450,000 times.</p>
<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re pretty shocked and find it a little hard to believe and amusing in a way. But Porn Time, the Popcorn Time for Porn, became an Internet phenomenon just one week after it went live!&#8221; the team informs TF.</p>
<p>But it didn&#8217;t stop there. Figures complete up until this Wednesday reveal that the software now has 598,580 active users, an impressive feat for software with zero marketing budget and no app store to rely upon. However, this growth wasn&#8217;t achieved entirely smoothly.</p>
<p>&#8220;We weren&#8217;t prepared for such an eruption of people coming to get Porn Time and our servers crashed. Twice,&#8221; the team reveal.</p>
<p>&#8220;Pornleech also crashed!! They just couldn&#8217;t handle the heat. It took them a few days to get their act back together and got back online just recently. In the meantime we went and fetched some more sources of content, The Pirate Bay for example, which made our users happier and more addicted.&#8221;</p>
<p>With 58.6% of installs the Windows edition of Porn Time proved most exciting, with Mac users holding their own with 32.71% of the total. That left Linux users to bring up the rear with 8.69%.</p>
<p>Keen to keep pressing forward, a few hours ago the Porn Time team debuted a brand new Android edition. They expect that it too will become a roaring success.</p>
<p>&#8220;Anyone can understand why an app like this on your personal mobile device is the best thing that has happened to humanity since bread came sliced,&#8221; the team told TF.</p>
<p>&#8220;Creating the first Android app was pretty easy because of Popcorn Time&#8217;s awesome Android app. We just took their app, made some cosmetic changes, and voila! Now you can see content that puts a smile on your face.&#8221;</p>
<p>And if Apple users are feeling left out, that sensation shouldn&#8217;t last for long. The team inform us that an iOS edition is just around the corner.</p>
<p>&#8220;I think we will release it in three weeks. We are in an advanced development stage, but the truth is that this is the first time we are programming in Objective C and it&#8217;s taking us some time,&#8221; the team concludes.</p>
<p>More information on Porn Time for Android can be found <a href="http://porntime.ws/android.html">here</a>.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107183
title: UK’s Legalization of CD Ripping is Unlawful, Court Rules
uri: UK-s-Legalization-of-CD-Ripping-is-Unlawful-Court-Rules
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/4Nt6ujEVyfc/
content:
<p><img src="media/4d28e669.uk-flag.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/uk-flag.jpg" alt="uk-flag" width="200" height="179" class="alignright size-full wp-image-86005">Late last year the UK Government <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/uk-government-legalizes-cd-ripping-cloud-backups-today-141001/">legalized copying for private use</a>, a practice which many citizens already believed to be legal. </p>
<p>However, until last October, anyone who transferred music from a purchased CD to an MP3 player was committing an offense. </p>
<p>The change was &#8220;in the best interest&#8221; of consumers, the Government reasoned, but several music industry organizations disagreed.</p>
<p>In November the Musicians’ Union (MU), the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA) and UK Music <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/record-biz-wants-to-tax-brits-for-copying-their-own-music-141126/">applied for a judicial review</a> of the new legislation. </p>
<p>While the groups are not against private copying exceptions, they disagreed with the Government&#8217;s conclusion that the change would cause no financial harm to the music industry. </p>
<p>Instead of keeping copies free, they suggested that a tax should be applied to blank media including blank CDs, hard drives, memory sticks and other blank media. This money would then be shared among rightsholders, a mechanism already operating in other European countries.</p>
<p>Today the High Court largely agreed with the music industry groups. The Government&#8217;s conclusion that copyright holders will not suffer any significant harm was based on inadequate evidence, Mr Justice Green <a href="http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2015/1723.html&#038;query=private+and+copying+and+exception+and+music&#038;method=boolean">ruled</a>.</p>
<p>&#8220;In conclusion, the decision to introduce section 28B [private copying] in the absence of a compensation mechanism is unlawful,&#8221; the Judge writes.</p>
<p>The Judge didn&#8217;t agree with all claims from the music groups. For example, he rejected the allegation that the Government had unlawfully predetermined the outcome of the private copying consultation.  </p>
<p>Nonetheless, the application for a judicial review succeeded meaning that the private copying exceptions are now deemed unlawful. As a result, the Government will likely have to amend the legislation, which took roughly half a decade to implement.</p>
<p>The UK music groups are happy with the outcome and are eager to discuss possible changes with lawmakers.</p>
<p>“The High Court agreed with us that Government acted unlawfully.  It is vitally important that fairness for songwriters, composers and performers is written into the law,&#8221; UK Music CEO Jo Dipple commented on the ruling.</p>
<p>“Changes to copyright law that affect such a vital part of the creative economy, which supports one in twelve jobs, must only be introduced if there is a robust evidential basis for doing so,”  Dipple added.</p>
<p>The High Court scheduled a new hearing next month to decide what action should be taken in response to the judgment, including whether the private copying exceptions should be scrapped from law.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">anonymous VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107127
title: Popular Torrents Being Sabotaged by IPv6 Peer Flood
uri: Popular-Torrents-Being-Sabotaged-by-IPv6-Peer-Flood
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/Ca_TFKz1EYc/
content:
<p><img src="media/f1b12f99.utorrent-logo-new.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/utorrent-logo-new.jpg" alt="utorrent-logo-new" width="222" height="148" class="alignright size-full wp-image-55606">Generally speaking, BitTorrent is a highly robust file-sharing protocol that&#8217;s not easily disrupted. However, in recent weeks there have been systematic efforts to prevent large groups of people from sharing popular pirated TV-shows and movies. </p>
<p>The sabotaging technique tries to make it impossible for downloaders to connect to other people by overwhelming BitTorrent swarms with IPv6 peers. </p>
<p>Because of its focus on IPv6, not all users are affected, but those who are sometimes see their download speeds grind to a halt. As a result it can take days to download a file, if at all. </p>
<p>In short the process works as follows. The attacker joins a popular torrent swarm with hundreds, if not thousands of IPv6 addresses. These fake peers request data from real downloaders, quickly filling up their request queues. </p>
<p>The fake peers never exchange any data but keep the client busy until they are banned, as is shown in the screenshot below. </p>
<p><center><img src="media/c4886557.ipv6f.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/ipv6f.png" alt="ipv6f" width="600" height="246" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-107138"></center></p>
<p>The attack has been confirmed to affect the popular client uTorrent. After a few minutes uTorrent does ban the malicious peers, but this makes little difference as the attackers use so many different IP-addresses.</p>
<p>Because all the fake peers have filled up the connection slots, real peers can no longer connect. This means that hardly any real data is transferred. </p>
<p><em>&#8220;Got unchoke from µTorrent 3.4.3 (12.345.678.9:9999), can&#8217;t request immediately because request queue is full&#8221;</em></p>
<p>TF was tipped off by the operator of one of the largest torrent trackers, who informed us that this type of attack is rampant. Many people are complaining about slow download speeds or torrents that are stuck. </p>
<p>&#8220;This new method of peer flooding makes a lot of people think there are issues with torrents. From an anti-piracy point of view it is achieving the purposed effect,&#8221; the tracker operator, who prefers to remain anonymous, said.</p>
<p>We were able to replicate the effect, which indeed makes downloading nearly impossible. After testing all of the larger BitTorrent clients it appears that only uTorrent and BitTorrent Mainline are vulnerable to the attack. However, together these two clients are used by the majority of all BitTorrent users. </p>
<p>We informed BitTorrent Inc, who develop the two clients, about the vulnerability. The company informed us that they are currently looking into the issue and may comment later. </p>
<p>Without an immediate fix, the tracker operator is advising affected users to switch to a different client for the time being, or disable IPv6 in Windows (not recommended for Windows 7 and up), if that&#8217;s an option. </p>
<p>&#8220;People experiencing download slowness &#8211; torrents stuck at 0% for more than 10 minutes, in a case where there are seeds available, should immediately switch to a different client or disable IPv6 in Windows,&#8221; the tracker operator says.</p>
<p>It is unclear who is behind the attacks, but considering the fact that it targets nearly all new TV and movie torrents, it could very well be a novel anti-piracy strategy. In any case, it&#8217;s definitely one of the most effective attempts to disrupt BitTorrent downloads in recent years.</p>
<p><strong>Update:</strong> The IPv6 addresses which are used appear to be fictional. They haven&#8217;t been allocated yet and are non-routable.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107141
title: When Piracy Gets Too Easy, Expect a Big Response
uri: When-Piracy-Gets-Too-Easy-Expect-a-Big-Response
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/mb_fPWUSs_k/
content:
<p><img src="media/5f9796f8.movies1.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/movies1.jpg" alt="movies" width="200" height="135" class="alignright size-full wp-image-105597">After one and a half decades of mainstream file-sharing, millions of people now have little trouble finding and consuming unauthorized content online. </p>
<p>For many the process is no more difficult than browsing the web but due to its technical nature the majority still find it bewildering. Then along came <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/?s=popcorn+time">Popcorn Time</a>, software that turned viewing movies into child&#8217;s play for anyone with a PC, tablet or phone.</p>
<p>But the idea behind Popcorn Time isn&#8217;t new. Advanced users of the popular Kodi software (previously known as XBMC) have been enjoying a super-charged Popcorn Time rival for many years. However, that largely requires the mastering of an often confusing third-party addon system. Inevitably, of course, that became streamlined too.</p>
<p>Just as Popcorn Time works out of the box, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/tvmc-battles-popcorn-time-via-google-play-141014/">custom installations</a> of Kodi do too. These installers make the previously complex setup process a breeze and in doing so introduce a whole new audience of novices to piracy, just like Popcorn Time has.</p>
<p>Of course, this simplicity hasn&#8217;t gone unnoticed by anti-piracy outfits. Legal action against Popcorn Time was common in 2014 and continued in 2015. No surprise then that those peddling &#8216;pirate&#8217; Kodi variants (which have nothing to do with the team behind the project) are now getting more attention.</p>
<p>The problem is availability and ease of use. Sold pre-configured in Android set-top box form on both eBay and Amazon, the devices are essentially a one-stop shop for not only pirate movies and TV shows, but also a streaming hub for live sports and PPV. Anyone can have one of these devices delivered next day and learn how to use it in under an hour. Oh, and they run Popcorn Time too. And <a href="http://showboxappdownload.com/">Showbox</a>.</p>
<p>As a result, piracy has never been easier and anti-piracy groups are scrambling to stem the tide. Just last week a seller of &#8216;pirate&#8217; Android boxes was <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-android-tv-box-sellers-raided-by-police-150612/">raided</a> by police in the UK and just days ago Amazon overreacted by <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/amazon-bans-kodi-app-over-piracy-concerns-150616/">banning</a> the entirely legal Kodi software itself, presumably after a copyright holder complaint.</p>
<p>Other attacks have been more targeted. Last year the Federation Against Copyright Theft <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/fact-wipes-pirate-sport-streaming-software-from-github-141026/">filed a complaint</a> against a popular live sports plugin for Kodi known as Sports Devil. But according to FACT, this was just the beginning of their crackdown on these piracy platforms. </p>
<p>“Those engaged in piracy have always been quick to take advantage of technological advances to create new methods to profit from delivering stolen content to a wider audience. The proliferation of IPTV and set-top boxes which can stream content is no exception,&#8221; the anti-piracy group told TF.</p>
<p>&#8220;We are working with our members and partners in  law enforcement on addressing these threats and significant measures are being taken by all parties, including online market places, to address the availability of these devices, as well as the apps and add ons that facilitate illegal streams, and bring those responsible to account.”</p>
<p>The &#8216;custom Kodi&#8217; epidemic hasn&#8217;t gone unnoticed in the Netherlands either. Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN is currently engaged in <a href="http://anti-piracy.nl/nieuws.php?id=353">legal action</a> against Filmspeler.nl, a seller of &#8220;<a href="http://www.filmspeler.nl/mediaplayerx9">fully loaded</a>&#8221; (a euphemism for &#8220;piracy configured&#8221;) Android boxes. </p>
<p>In fact, BREIN is so serious about ending the problem that the case is being sent to the European Court of Justice so that an opinion can be gained on whether streaming from illegal sources represents a breach of EU law. If BREIN wins it won&#8217;t end the problem, but it will draw a line in the sand in terms of how such products can be advertised and sold. </p>
<p>&#8220;We will always look at any system that is aimed at providing access to copyrighted content without consent of the right holders and by doing so is causing damage to the earning potential of right holders and licensed platforms,&#8221; BREIN chief Tim Kuik told TorrentFreak.</p>
<p>Finally, since these devices are increasingly being targeted at the non-tech savvy, is it possible that buyers are naive to the point that they don&#8217;t appreciate their dubious legal standing? Kuik thinks not.</p>
<p>&#8220;We see that people using such systems tend to be aware they are getting access to unauthorized content even if they don&#8217;t know how it works technically,&#8221; the BREIN chief concludes.</p>
<p>The big question now is what comes next, and what will be the industry&#8217;s response? That will become clear in the months and years to come but rest assured, the easier piracy becomes, the more vigorous the response will be.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107120
title: Popcorn Time Tops Google Search Results for “Popcorn”
uri: Popcorn-Time-Tops-Google-Search-Results-for-Popcorn
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/xCUhAlEDuIM/
content:
<p><img src="media/3b9dbdf1.popcornt.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/popcornt.png" alt="popcornt" width="237" height="106" class="alignright size-full wp-image-101106">Dubbed the “Netflix for Pirates,” the Popcorn Time app quickly gathered a user base of millions of people over the past year.</p>
<p>The application has some of the major media giants worried, including Netflix which sees the pirate app as a serious competitor to its business.</p>
<p>Increasing this threat, Popcorn Time has now taken the top spot in Google search results, a position that used to be held by the popular movie snack &#8220;<a href="https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ncr#q=popcorn">popcorn</a>&#8220;. </p>
<p>For years, the Popcorn Wikipedia entry has been listed as the number one result but it has now been replaced by the Popcorntime.io website. </p>
<p>Results may vary based on location, but TF has confirmed that the pirate app has seized the top spot in the US, UK and the Netherlands. The screenshot below shows Google&#8217;s results from California. </p>
<p>Popcorn Time&#8217;s domination is not shared on Bing, where the app is <a href="media/a6c51829.HzkLbFS.png" data-original-source="http://i.imgur.com/HzkLbFS.png">nowhere near</a> the top results. </p>
<p><center><img src="media/537bcebe.popgoogletop.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/popgoogletop.png" alt="popgoogletop" width="593" height="588" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-107124"></center></p>
<p>In addition to the top listing, Google&#8217;s Autocomplete feature also favors Popcorn Time over the snack. Just entering the three letters &#8220;pop&#8221; is enough for the suggestion to appear. </p>
<p>It&#8217;s unclear why Google favors Popcorn Time over Popcorn, as the latter is still <a href="media/6d9536b0.QMRO1dj.png" data-original-source="http://i.imgur.com/QMRO1dj.png">more sought after</a> in the search engine. Perhaps the recent rise of the application and the many online discussions have something to do with it.</p>
<p><center><img src="media/dc91b416.popcsuggest.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/popcsuggest.png" alt="popcsuggest" width="600" height="161" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-107125"></center></p>
<p>Whatever the case, Hollywood is not going to be pleased with how Google algorithms have pushed Popcorn Time into the limelight. </p>
<p>The MPAA has been complaining bitterly about pirate sites outranking legitimate content, and they&#8217;ll see this recent example as yet more ammunition to keep pushing. So get the <a href="https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ncr#q=popcorn">popcorn ready</a>!</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107095
title: The Dawn of Online Music Piracy
uri: The-Dawn-of-Online-Music-Piracy
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/QSwxtr6MyJc/
content:
<p><img src="media/3500e043.fraun.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/fraun.png" alt="fraun" width="300" height="165" class="alignright size-full wp-image-107096"><strong>The Dawn of Online Music Piracy</strong></p>
<p>By 1994, the development of the first mp3 encoder was complete. Working at an audio research laboratory at Germany’s state-funded <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunhofer_Society#Notable_projects">Fraunhofer Institute</a>, engineers had labored for seven years and spent millions of dollars to develop a functioning prototype. </p>
<p>The encoder was marvelous—by exploiting inherent flaws in the human ear, it could reduce the size of compact disc audio by more than 90%, with minimal losses in quality. But Fraunhofer had been outmaneuvered in the marketplace, and couldn’t generate sales. </p>
<p>In desperation, they decided to distribute their encoder for free. They began by handing out floppy disks at trade shows and conferences. Soon, distribution moved to the Internet, with a limited-functionality DOS-based encoder posted on Fraunhofer’s FTP sites. The encoder was supposed to produce only low-bitrate files, and stop working after 20 uses. Quickly, it was cracked.</p>
<p>By late 1995, USENET was awash with pirated music files. Most of these were simple demonstrations of the technology, not full songs. Modern conveniences make it hard to remember the limitations of media distribution of the time; bandwidth meant 28,800 bits per second over a screeching telephone line, and compressing an mp3 from a CD meant a dedicated hour of CPU resources, accompanied by the buzz of a whirring fan. </p>
<p>The underground pirates of the Scene first adopted the technology in August of 1996. The pioneering group was Compress ‘Da Audio (CDA); their first release was Metallica’s “Until It Sleeps.” The full song was stored as a RAR file across four 3.5” floppy disk drives. These disks were then sent through the mail. </p>
<p><center><strong>Compress &#8216;Da Audio&#8217;s first releases, from the Affinity scene zine.</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/aca566db.afflinity-3-early-mp3-releases.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/afflinity-3-early-mp3-releases.png" alt="afflinity 3 early mp3 releases" width="570" height="346" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-107099"></center></p>
<p>By late August, the rival Digital Audio Crew (DAC) had moved into the space; they posted an mp3-ripping tutorial to USENET, along with a direct link to Fraunhofer’s FTP site, accompanied by the serial numbers needed to unlock the encoder.</p>
<p>By the start of 1997, piracy had moved from floppy disks to campus servers, and processing power had doubled. Scene groups started releasing whole albums, not just individual singles. The files were no longer distributed through the postal service, but instead through IRC networks, FTP sites and even HTML links. </p>
<p>The Scene celebrated a “0-day” mentality—one gained notoriety by being the first to post pirated material to the Net. With music, that meant getting inside the retail industry’s supply chain. </p>
<p>The pioneering Scene group Rabid Neurosis (RNS) began infiltrating record stores, exploiting offset international release dates, and recruiting music journalists and commercial radio DJs. Music became available on the Internet weeks, sometimes months, before it was due in stores. In time, RNS became the dominant player, sourcing thousands of pre-release albums from <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/04/27/the-man-who-broke-the-music-business">Dell Glover and Tony Dockery</a>, two workers at a North Carolina CD manufacturing plant. </p>
<p><center><strong>RNS&#8217; first release, distributed on four 1.44 MB disks (<a href="http://torrentfreak.com/images/RNS-first-release-Eazy-E-NFO.txt">NFO</a>)</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/e4aad7ea.rns1.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/rns1.png" alt="rns" width="535" height="495" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-107102"></center></p>
<p>A generation came of age in that IRC underground—for many users it was their formative experience online. Included were Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, who’d met in an chat channel, where they’d shared their frustrations with the inefficiencies of late-90s file-swapping. Fanning, 18, wrote 80,000 lines of code, for a new peer-to-peer platform he called Napster. Parker, 19, was deputized to promote it. In June of 1999, the software débuted. </p>
<p>The golden age of online piracy had begun.</p>
<p>&#8212;</p>
<h4>About The Author</h4>
<p><img src="media/c5dda520.stephen.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/stephen.jpg" alt="stephen" width="178" height="148" class="alignright size-full wp-image-107110"></p>
<p><em><a href="https://twitter.com/stephenwitt">Stephen Witt</a> is a journalist from Brooklyn, New York. </p>
<p>He&#8217;s the author of &#8220;<a href="http://stephenwittbooks.com/books/how-music-got-free-hc">How Music Got Free</a>,&#8221; a well-researched book about the rise of music piracy and the key players that contributed to the early success of online file-sharing.</em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107123
title: TorrentTags: A Database of ‘Risky’ Torrents
uri: TorrentTags-A-Database-of-Risky-Torrents
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/r-FB3qns1T4/
content:
<p><img src="media/3d881413.spy.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/spy.jpg" alt="spy" width="200" height="177" class="alignright size-full wp-image-39770">You&#8217;ve spotted a hot music torrent in the top 100 most popular downloads on The Pirate Bay. You&#8217;re keen to obtain it but if you grab it now, the chances are that several anti-piracy companies will monitor the transaction.</p>
<p>Whether that decision will result in <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/six-strikes-anti-piracy-warnings-double-year-140830/">a strike</a> on your ISP account, a $3,000 lawsuit, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-demands-cash-from-friends-pirates-150608/">a $20 fine</a>, or absolutely nothing at all, depends largely on a combination of luck and a collision of circumstances. However, a project currently in beta aims to better inform users whether the torrent they&#8217;re about to grab is of interest to anti-piracy companies.</p>
<p>Created by a team of Australian software developers in response to tougher anti-piracy legislation, <a href="https://torrenttags.com/">TorrentTags</a> is currently building a user-searchable database which aims to provide a level of &#8216;risk&#8217; advice on any given torrent while helping to reduce piracy.</p>
<p><center><img src="media/eb2a0c3d.ttag-main.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/ttag-main.png" alt="ttag-main" width="600" height="341" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-107205"></center></p>
<p>TorrentTags obtains its data in two ways. Firstly, it uses the <a href="https://www.chillingeffects.org/">Chilling Effects database</a> to import the details of torrents that have already been subjected to a DMCA notice on feeder sites including Google search, Twitter and Facebook. </p>
<p>Second, and more controversially, the site is calling on rightsholders to submit details and hashes of content they do not want freely shared on BitTorrent. These can then be added to the TorrentTags database so that when people search for content, warnings are clearly displayed.</p>
<p>&#8220;Rightsholders can inform torrent users about copyrighted torrents by sending claims to our database. This is likely to lead to a decrease in the number of downloads of those torrents,&#8221; the team informs TF.</p>
<p>However, the team also views the problem from another angle. Concerned by companies such as Dallas Buyers Club LLC using downloaders as a cash-settlement <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/trolls-want-to-interrogate-bittorrent-pirates-by-phone-150618/">revenue stream</a>, TorrentTags would like to see public declarations placed on their site to warn potential targets in advance.</p>
<p>&#8220;Without a public claim [by copyright holders] the monitoring of users&#8217; activity with the goal of suing would be equivalent to &#8216;honeypot&#8217; strategies. This is because, from a user&#8217;s perspective, any torrent without a public claim is indistinguishable from a torrent created by a copyright owner with the aim of operating a &#8216;honeypot&#8217;,&#8221; the team explain.</p>
<p><Center><br>
<h4>Warning: Dallas Buyers Club</h4>
<p><img src="media/8f44d76b.tab-dbc.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/tab-dbc.png" alt="tab-dbc" width="600" height="393" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-107193"></center></p>
<p>And herein lies a problem. While it seems unlikely that companies like DBC are operating their own &#8216;honeypots&#8217;, copyright trolls do rely on users sharing their content on BitTorrent in order to track and eventually demand settlement from them. It is therefore unlikely that the most &#8216;dangerous&#8217; torrents would be voluntarily submitted to TorrentTags by those monitoring them.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s certainly possible for information to be added to the database once a lawsuit is made public, but by this time many downloaders will have already been caught. Of course, it may serve as assistance for the future, but it&#8217;s also worth noting that Dallas Buyers Club have been suing people publicly for years and still people continue to download the movie.</p>
<p>On the other hand, for companies that simply don&#8217;t want their content shared in public, submitting data to a site like TorrentTags might be a way to deter at least some people from downloading their content without permission. Whether they could be encouraged to do so in large volumes remains to be seen &#8211; a strong level of participation from a broad range of rightsholders will be required in order to maximize the value of the resource.</p>
<p>While certainly an interesting concept, the TorrentTags team have significant hurdles to overcome to ensure that users of the site aren&#8217;t inadvertently misled. Although the importation of millions of notices from Chilling Effects is a good start, the existence of a DMCA notice doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean that a torrent is being monitored by trolls. Equally, just because a torrent isn&#8217;t listed as &#8216;dangerous&#8217; it shouldn&#8217;t automatically be presumed that it&#8217;s safe to download.</p>
<p>In some ways TorrentTags faces some of the same challenges presented to blocklist providers. Although some users swear by them, IP blockers are well-known for not only overblocking, but also letting through a significant number of IP addresses that they <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-blocklists-dont-keep-bittorrent-spies-out-120904/">should&#8217;ve blocked</a>. Time will tell how the balance will be achieved.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, if TorrentTags indeed develops in the manner envisioned by its creators, it could turn into a fascinating resource, not only for BitTorrent users but also those researching anti-piracy methods.</p>
<p>&#8220;We hope that TorrentTags will be able to serve as a comprehensive and easily accessible claim database for users. We also hope that TorrentTags will help dissolve the social stigma unjustly associated with Torrents and allow them to be widely used by society for file sharing purposes,&#8221; the team conclude.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107232
title: The Entire Copyright Monopoly Idea is Based on a Colossal Lie
uri: The-Entire-Copyright-Monopoly-Idea-is-Based-on-a-Colossal-Lie
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/20BvLMD-LDk/
content:
<p><img src="media/db7b975c.copyright-branded.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/copyright-branded.jpg" alt="copyright-branded" width="250" height="164" class="alignright size-full wp-image-56211">The copyright monopoly was reinstated in Great Britain in 1710, after having lapsed in England in 1695. It was enacted because printers (not writers) insisted, that if they didn&#8217;t have exclusive rights to boost profitability, nothing would get printed.</p>
<p>(Do note the difference between books getting written on one hand, and getting printed and distributed on the other. It was printers, not writers and authors, that drove the reinstatement of the copyright monopoly through the so-called Statute of Anne.)</p>
<p>The Parliament of Great Britain accepted this premise, and thus, the social contract of the copyright monopoly was formed: &#8220;In return for providing the only service that can make culture come into being for the benefit of the public, the publishers and distributors are awarded with time-limited exclusive rights.&#8221;</p>
<p>Note the very important assumption here: if the exclusive rights &#8211; the copyright monopoly &#8211; don&#8217;t exist, <em>there will not be any culture</em>. This is the contract which governments have been acting on ever since: in exchange for providing a magic service that calls culture into being in the first place, the publishers have enjoyed exclusive rights that allow them to punish and withhold.</p>
<p><strong>The social contract between the public and the copyright industry is, that in exchange for exclusive rights, the publishers will make culture available, being the only ones who can supply such availability of culture.</strong></p>
<p>It turns out the entire premise is bullshit.</p>
<p>With the advent of the Internet, we see that people are creating <em>despite</em> these exclusive rights, this monopoly, instead of <em>because</em> of it. Millions of creators &#8211; millions! &#8211; have publicly renounced their <em>already-awarded</em> exclusive rights by publishing under a Creative Commons license.</p>
<p>YouTube alone receives 300 hours of new video every minute. This means YouTube alone provides 18,000 24/7 TV channels, most of which are not worth watching &#8211; in other words, just like the legacy TV channels.</p>
<p><strong>The notion that the copyright industry alone is capable of providing culture has been exposed as an enormous, audacious, bold-faced utter lie.</strong></p>
<p>So if you were the government, the buyer in this scenario, what would you do? The buyer who gives very valuable exclusive rights to the copyright industry who claimed that the existence of such a contract was the only way to have any culture available at all &#8211; what would you do now that it&#8217;s clear that you&#8217;ve been paying much much <em>much</em> too high a price?</p>
<p>You would terminate the contract with this lying seller of public culture who demanded harmful exclusive rights in exchange for culture to be created. You would find another supplier who provided better terms to the public. And most importantly, you would not care about what the old seller &#8211; the copyright industry &#8211; had to say about your new negotiations.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s now any other procurement works, after all: if you&#8217;re unhappy with a supplier, you find a new supplier, and obviously, the old supplier doesn&#8217;t get to have a say about the next deal with another supplier. There is no reason at all why culture and knowledge should work differently.</p>
<p>In other words, there is no reason at all why the copyright industry should enjoy any exclusive rights at all, and in particular, there is no reason why they should have any say about having them revoked. They haven&#8217;t delivered on the social contract, so the contract gets revoked. End of story.</p>
<p><center>
<div class="alignfull" style="border:2px solid #3F3F3F;width:100%;padding:15px;padding-top:8px;padding-bottom:4px;margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:10px;border-radius:10px">
<h3 style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:10px">
<div style="float:right;height:130px;width:39px;margin-left:20px;margin-right:10px"><img src="media/98818a80.Rick_Falkvinge_39x130.jpg" data-original-source="http://falkvinge.net/wp-content/themes/WpNewspaper/images/falkvinge/Rick_Falkvinge_39x130.jpg" style="border:none;-moz-box-shadow:none;-webkit-box-shadow:none" class="quimby_search_image"></div>
<p><span style="color:#3F3F3F;font-size:125%">About The</span> <span style="color:#FF3C78;font-size:125%">Author</span></p>
</h3>
<p style="font-family:PTSansRegular,Arial,Sans-Serif;font-weight:400;line-height:150%;margin-bottom:14px"><small>Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at <a href="http://falkvinge.net">falkvinge.net</a> focuses on information policy.</small></p>
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<p><small>Book Falkvinge <a href="http://falkvinge.net/keynotes/">as speaker</a>?</small></p>
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<p><a href="http://twitter.com/Falkvinge" class="twitter-follow-button">Follow @Falkvinge</a></p>
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<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107252
title: Libgen Goes Down As Legal Pressure Mounts
uri: Libgen-Goes-Down-As-Legal-Pressure-Mounts
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/84cmh7MS06Y/
content:
<p><img src="media/2e55b841.libhen.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/libhen.png" alt="libhen" width="236" height="119" class="alignright size-full wp-image-106658">Most of the top academic articles are published in journals that can only be accessed legally through expensive paywalls. </p>
<p>The Library Genesis Project, or Libgen for short, has systematically breached this barrier by hosting pirated copies of scientific publications as well as mainstream books. </p>
<p>Earlier this month one of the largest publishers went into action to stop this threat. Elsevier <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/elsevier-cracks-down-on-pirated-scientific-articles-150609/">filed a complaint</a> at a New York District Court, hoping to shut down Libgen.org and several sister sites. </p>
<p>The case has barely got going but the main Libgen.org site as well as several of its mirrors have been offline for the past few days.</p>
<p>The downtime is not the result of the preliminary injunction Elsevier requested, as that hasn&#8217;t been granted yet. However, a few days ago the court did <a href="media/f0d7a40e.gov.uscourts.nysd.442951.15.0.pdf" data-original-source="http://ia601504.us.archive.org/11/items/gov.uscourts.nysd.442951/gov.uscourts.nysd.442951.15.0.pdf">approve</a> the publishers&#8217; motion to serve Libgen&#8217;s operators via email.</p>
<p>In addition, a recent court filing shows that Elsevier&#8217;s lawyers have taken action on their own. They contacted the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Interest_Registry">Public Interest Registry</a> (.ORG) hoping to disable an infringing domain name without interference of the court. </p>
<p>The .ORG registry refused to do so, noting that it would require a valid court order to suspend a domain name. </p>
<p>&#8220;Through its counsel, the Public Interest Registry informed me that it does not disable domains absent a valid court order, but would promptly comply with a valid court order to disable a domain,&#8221; Elsevier&#8217;s lawyer informs the court.</p>
<p>Whether Libgen&#8217;s downtime is a direct result of Elsevier&#8217;s interference is unknown at this point, but the .org domain as well as the popular .in alternative are currently unreachable due to nameserver issues.</p>
<p>There are some other &#8216;mirrors&#8217; that still work though, including Libgen.biz and Gen.lib.rus.ec. The .biz domain points to the same IP-address range the official domain used, suggesting that Libgen&#8217;s hosting servers are still operational.</p>
<p>Several other domains named in the lawsuit, including bookfi.org and sci-hub.org, also remain online. </p>
<p>In a few weeks the New York federal court will decide whether to issue the preliminary injunction or not. Until then, Libgen&#8217;s operators have the option to oppose the request. </p>
<p>If the injunction is granted it will be much harder for Libgen to operate. Among other things, it would allow Elsevier to order hosting companies, domain name registries and search engines to stop providing services to the site.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107241
title: Australia Passes ‘Pirate’ Site Blocking Law
uri: Australia-Passes-Pirate-Site-Blocking-Law
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/aP8G-fVGeEI/
content:
<p><img src="media/a48beb7d.stopstop.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/stopstop.jpg" alt="stopstop" width="180" height="120" class="alignright size-full wp-image-81719">Following intense pressure from entertainment industry groups, late 2014 Australia&#8217;s Attorney-General George Brandis and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull asked the Cabinet to develop legislation which would allow &#8216;pirate&#8217; sites to be blocked at the ISP level.</p>
<p>In March 2015 the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015 <em>(<a href="http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bills/r5446_third-reps/toc_pdf/15056b01.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf">pdf</a>)</em> was <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-friendly-aussie-pirate-site-blocking-draft-unveiled-150326/">introduced to parliament</a> and earlier this month it received the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/aussie-pirate-site-blocking-bill-given-the-green-light-150611/">green light</a> following a parliamentary committee investigation.</p>
<p>A few moments ago and following just three months of consideration by parliament, the Australian Senate passed the legislation into law. The net result is that in the months and years to come, sites like The Pirate Bay will become inaccessible by regular direct means to most local Internet users. </p>
<p>While there will be celebrations in Hollywood, not everyone in the process is happy with the outcome. The Australian Greens outright rejected the legislation, a position shared by several independents. ISPs and technology companies also complained about elements of the legislation, alongside consumer groups such as Choice who expressed concern that the scope of the law could be expanded in future.</p>
<p>In the final count, 37 voted in favor and 13 against, with the Coalition and Labor in favor and the Greens and three other senators voting against. Labor joined the government to vote down several amendments tabled by the Greens aimed at narrowing the scope of the legislation.</p>
<p>Despite an effort by the government to <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/netflix-vpn-problem-leave-consumers-alone-aussie-minister-says-150617/">calm nerves last week</a> by ensuring consumers that VPNs won&#8217;t be targeted by the legislation, a specific exemption for <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">VPN providers</a> was rejected.</p>
<p>The legislation does not detail who will pay the ISPs&#8217; costs associated with blocking websites. Earlier this month it was noted by a parliamentary committee that costs should &#8220;primarily be borne by those parties who are seeking the remedy&#8221; but nothing firm has been agreed thus far.</p>
<p>The passing of the law was welcomed by Foxtel Chief Executive, Richard Freudenstein.</p>
<p>“We are pleased that the Government and Opposition have taken strong action to combat online piracy. They recognize that, not only is piracy theft and therefore morally wrong, it is harmful to Australia’s creative communities and to businesses that employ hundreds of thousands of Australians,&#8221; Freudenstein said.</p>
<p>“These offshore sites are not operated by noble spirits fighting for the freedom of the internet, they are run by criminals who profit from stealing other people’s creative endeavors.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Bill will now be sent to the Governor-General for royal assent at which point it will become effective immediately.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107236
title: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 06/22/15
uri: Top-10-Most-Pirated-Movies-of-The-Week-06-22-15
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/6SLnYFIZIvg/
content:
<p><img src="media/4bff0fef.gethard.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/gethard.jpg" alt="gethard" width="300" height="190" class="alignright size-full wp-image-106905">This week we have three newcomers in our chart.</p>
<p>Get Hard is the most downloaded movie for the second week in a row.</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 BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.</p>
<p><a href="http://TorrentFreak.com/category/dvdrip/feed/"><strong>RSS feed</strong></a> for the weekly movie download chart.</p>
<table class="css hover">
<thead>
<tr>
<th width="12%"><strong>Ranking</strong></th>
<th width="15%"><strong>(<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-of-the-week-061515/">last week</a>)</strong></th>
<th><strong>Movie</strong></th>
<th width="18%"><strong>IMDb Rating / Trailer</strong></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tfoot>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">torrentfreak.com</td>
</tr>
</tfoot>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><strong>1</strong></td>
<td>(1)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/get_hard/">Get Hard</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2561572/">6.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEqrpuU9fYI">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>2</strong></td>
<td>(4)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jurassic_world/">Jurassic World</a> (TS)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369610/">7.7</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFinNxS5KN4">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>3</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/cinderella_2013/">Cinderella</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1661199/">7.3</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRuHM6rLSF8">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>4</strong></td>
<td>(2)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/run_all_night/">Run All Night</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2199571/">6.7</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uDuFh-nC-c">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>5</strong></td>
<td>(3)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kingsman_the_secret_service/">Kingsman: The Secret Service</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2802144/">8.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl8F-8tR8to">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>6</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_gunman_2015/">The Gunman</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2515034/">5.6</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug9xufczPVE">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>7</strong></td>
<td>(5)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chappie/">Chappie</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1823672/">7.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyy7y0QOK-0">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>8</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/woman_in_gold/">Woman in Gold</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2404425/">7.5</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geJeX6iIlO0">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>9</strong></td>
<td>(6)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/771418863/">San Andreas Quake</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4547120/">2.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-fSiFJcw9k">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>10</strong></td>
<td>(7)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/furious_7/">Furious 7</a> (Subbed/cropped HDRip)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2820852/">8.8</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yISKeT6sDOg">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107281
title: Court Forbids Rojadirecta to Stream Football, Or Else…
uri: Court-Forbids-Rojadirecta-to-Stream-Football-Or-Else
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/50yJ8tUmtwI/
content:
<p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/oddsock/14433910663/in/photostream/lightbox/"><img src="media/30029f18.roja1.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/roja1.png" alt="roja" width="250" height="162" class="alignright size-full wp-image-107288"></a>As one of the most prominent live streaming sites, <a href="http://www.rojadirecta.me/">Rojadirecta</a> is a thorn in the side of many international sports organizations.</p>
<p>The website is operated by the Spanish company Puerto 80, which previously won <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/streaming-and-bittorrent-sports-links-site-declared-legal-090724/">two</a> <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/sports-streaming-torrent-links-site-victorious-in-court-100510/">lawsuits</a> in Spain, declaring the site as operating legally under local law. </p>
<p>Even the U.S. Government couldn&#8217;t bring the site down. In 2011 the Department of Homeland Security seized the site&#8217;s domain name, but facing a legal battle the authorities chose to <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-returns-seized-domains-to-streaming-links-site-after-18-months-120830/">hand it back</a> to the rightful owners.</p>
<p>Now, several years later the odds seem to have turned. Following a complaint from the Professional Football League (LFP), a Madrid court has ruled that Rojadirecta can no longer link to unauthorized streams of football events to which Mediapro and Gol Television own the rights.</p>
<p>The court issued a preliminary injunction that orders the site&#8217;s operators to cease these activities within seven days. If the company fails to comply, local Internet providers will be instructed to block access to Rojadirecta.</p>
<p>Martinez Trujillo, director Strategic Projects of the Spanish Football League, praised the court&#8217;s decision while openly insulting one of the defendants.</p>
<p>&#8220;We have great news issued barely an hour ago,&#8221; Martinez Trujillo <a href="http://www.europapress.es/nacional/noticia-ordenan-rojadirectame-cese-inmediato-emision-partidos-fulbol-20150622122917.html">announced yesterday</a>. &#8220;The Football League has been working intensively against piracy during the last 18 months and today we won the first great battle against this man, who is really a crook.&#8221;</p>
<p><center><img src="media/9e4e7e16.rojal.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/rojal.png" alt="rojal" width="600" height="347" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-107286"></center></p>
<p>Speaking with TF, Rojadirecta stresses that the Madrid court issued the injunction without delving into the merits of the case. The company maintains that it&#8217;s operating legally and will appeal the verdict in a full trial. </p>
<p>&#8220;This does not affect our right to continue operating the website,&#8221; a Rojadirecta spokesperson says, adding that they don&#8217;t expect to make any significant changes to the site.</p>
<p>As a result, Rojadirecta may soon be blocked by Spanish ISPs but the company is confident that it can overturn the preliminary injunction in the long run.</p>
<p>&#8220;Rojadirecta is advised in Europe by a number of legal teams with the best experience regarding Internet operators liabilities. We are very aware of the legality of Rojadirecta; our operations now and in the future are not reckless.&#8221; </p>
<p>The preliminary injunction is based on misleading statements from the Spanish Football League, according to the streaming site, who note that the verdict would have been different if they were given the opportunity to defend themselves. </p>
<p>There is no doubt that the injunction puts Rojadirecta at a disadvantage, but the company believes that it will win in the end, securing yet another legal precedent. </p>
<p>&#8220;In any case, we continue to work this issue with hope. In the end we will win, but we will have to fight quite a bit. This new challenge will end up putting us in a better position,&#8221; Rojadirecta concludes.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107312
title: Surprise! VPN Provider Expects Victory in Site-Block Arms Race
uri: Surprise-VPN-Provider-Expects-Victory-in-Site-Block-Arms-Race
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/GfAxaXKztO0/
content:
<p><img src="media/ab7395e4.network-150x150.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/network-150x150.jpg" alt="network" width="96" height="96" class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-83358">After years of pressure but mere months of deliberations, yesterday the Australian government <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/australia-passes-pirate-site-blocking-law-150622/">imposed a new copyright law</a> on its citizens.</p>
<p>As soon as it receives the formality of royal assent, the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015 will enter into force and soon after it&#8217;s expected that rightsholders will make their first moves to have a site blocked.</p>
<p>After the passing of the law yesterday a lot of furious people took to the web, many decrying the censorship and filtering efforts of the Australian government. But despite the outcry there are others who are not only relaxed about the upcoming efforts but also stand to profit handsomely from them.</p>
<p>They are of course <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">VPN providers</a>, services setup to cut through web-blockades and similar efforts like a hot knife through butter. They&#8217;re already extremely popular in Australia due to their geo-unblocking abilities and will now do even more business as a result of the country&#8217;s new law.</p>
<p>However, there are still those that remain concerned over the future of VPNs and their status as site-blocking kryptonite. Might the government eventually run out of patience and do a U-turn <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/netflix-vpn-problem-leave-consumers-alone-aussie-minister-says-150617/">on assurances</a> they won&#8217;t tackle the technology by blocking? Would it matter, practically, if they did?</p>
<p>Robert Knapp, chief executive at <a href="http://www.cyberghostvpn.com/en_gb">CyberGhost</a>, one of the more popular VPN providers, doesn&#8217;t think so. He is calm, taking developments completely in his stride, and foresees no threat to his business.</p>
<p>&#8220;We see in general the same that you see in nature if somebody tries to block a river floating &#8211; the water finds his way,&#8221; Knapp says.</p>
<p>Despite attempts by the Australian Greens to have VPNs exempted from the new law, it is unlikely that services who play by the rules (i.e do not promote their products for infringing purposes) will be blocked. However, if the authorities want to test the waters, companies like CyberGhost will be up for the challenge.</p>
<p>&#8220;They should also then realize with whom they play in the same league,&#8221; Knapp <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2015/s4260274.htm">says</a>.</p>
<p>&#8220;Maybe they do it [blocking], maybe they don’t do it, it’s kind of a technical race. So it’s our daily business. They might do it, we will find a way to keep our servers running.&#8221;</p>
<p>While most people understand that blocking a determined service provider could descend into an endless arms-race, rightsholders are also keenly aware of the political fallout from attacking legitimate technologies. </p>
<p>“We didn’t intend this law to be used specifically against VPN because there are many legitimate uses of VPN and the intention of the law is not to stop people using the internet for legitimate purposes,” a Foxtel spokesperson told <a href="http://mumbrella.com.au/astra-predicts-piracy-traffic-could-halve-following-new-laws-despite-concern-over-vpn-loophole-301318">Mumbrella</a> this morning.</p>
<p>And herein lies the problem. By driving traffic underground, into the encrypted tunnels of VPNs, rightsholders now have even less of an idea of who is pirating what and from where. VPNs are a legitimate but &#8220;dual use&#8221; technology, one that can be used for privacy or indeed piracy purposes. It&#8217;s a giant loophole that will be difficult to close. Nevertheless, companies like Foxtel say they will keep an developments.</p>
<p>&#8220;We would obviously be concerned if it meant there was a hole in the law,&#8221; the spokesman said. “We will be monitoring how things go and see if there is a serious issue in the future.”</p>
<p>So what next for Australia&#8217;s blocking regime?</p>
<p>If history from the UK repeats itself (and there&#8217;s every reason to believe that it will), rightsholders will first take on a site that is guaranteed to tick every &#8216;pirate&#8217; box. That forerunner is almost certain to be The Pirate Bay, a site that is not only located overseas as the legislation requires, but one that also has no respect for copyright. The fact that it has been blocked in plenty of other regions already will be the icing on the cake.</p>
<p>Once the case against The Pirate Bay is complete then other &#8220;structurally similar&#8221; sites will be tackled with relative ease and since none of their operators will be appearing in court to defend themselves, expect the process to be streamlined in favor of copyright holders.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107328
title: ISPs Dump VPN After Legal Threats From Big Media
uri: ISPs-Dump-VPN-After-Legal-Threats-From-Big-Media
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/gvvRkxq9JFo/
content:
<p><img src="media/0bf08826.face-palm.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/face-palm.jpg" alt="face-palm" width="200" height="133" class="alignright size-full wp-image-61200">Unlocking geo-restricted digital content is an activity carried out by millions every day, but the practice is frowned upon by entertainment industry companies.</p>
<p>The large amounts of time, effort and financial planning that go into complex licensing agreements can be undone in an instant by a user of a VPN or &#8216;smart&#8217; DNS service, opening up services like Netflix and breaking down barriers to U.S-based products such as Hulu.</p>
<p>In April, media companies SKY, TVNZ, Lightbox and MediaWorks <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/isp-pulls-vpn-service-after-geo-unblocking-legal-threats-150407/">told</a> several Kiwi ISPs that if they didn&#8217;t stop providing geo-unblocking services to their subscribers, legal action wouldn&#8217;t be far ahead.</p>
<p>Within days and following claims of breaches of the Copyright Act, Unlimited Internet pulled its VPN service. However, CallPlus and Bypass Network Services stood firm and stated that they <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/tv-companies-will-sue-vpn-providers-in-days-150417/">weren&#8217;t going to be bullied</a>.</p>
<p>Now, just two months later, both providers have caved in to the demands of the media companies. The news was revealed in the briefest of announcements posted to the NZX by Sky TV this morning.</p>
<p>&#8220;The legal proceedings against &#8216;Global Mode&#8217; service providers have been settled. As a result, from 1 September 2015, the &#8216;Global Mode&#8217; service will not be available to any person for use in New Zealand,&#8221; the <a href="https://www.nzx.com/companies/SKT/announcements/266075">statement</a> reads.</p>
<p>The news will come as a blow to users of the &#8216;Global Mode&#8217; service who will now have to find alternatives if they wish to continue accessing geo-locked content. While that will be <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">extremely easy</a>, Global Mode was a free product so it&#8217;s likely that additional costs could be on the horizon.</p>
<p>InternetNZ, the non-profit group that oversees the Internet in New Zealand, says it is &#8220;deeply disappointed&#8221; by the news. </p>
<p>&#8220;Global Mode was a great example of Internet-based innovation that challenged traditional content distribution models. It was by no means clear that the service was illegal, and we were keen to see the matter go before the courts to provide users and the industry with clarity,&#8221; said InternetNZ Chief Executive Jordan Carter.</p>
<p>&#8220;Withdrawing the service and settling before court seems a worse outcome for all concerned. The media companies have said that they wanted to clarify their own legal rights over content &#8211; a settlement doesn&#8217;t achieve this, and leaves us all none the wiser.&#8221;</p>
<p>Noting that both Internet users and innovation have &#8220;taken a back seat to entrenched old media interests&#8221;, the InternetNZ chief called for a revised look at local copyright legislation.</p>
<p>&#8220;This outcome makes it ever more important that we review New Zealand copyright law, to ensure that the interests of consumers and creators are appropriately balanced.&#8221; </p>
<p>Those looking for the all-important details on why the companies backed down will be disappointed. The details of the settlement between the providers and entertainment companies are confidential. Submissions will be made to the court but they will not be for public consumption.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107324
title: Cox Wants Rightscorp’s Piracy Tracking Source Code
uri: Cox-Wants-Rightscorp-s-Piracy-Tracking-Source-Code
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/7sJgTWXnr8Q/
content:
<p><img src="media/f2bfe741.pirate-running.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/pirate-running.jpg" alt="pirate-running" width="222" height="204" class="alignright size-full wp-image-78717">Piracy monetization firm Rightscorp has made quite a few <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/tag/rightscorp/">headlines</a> over the past year.</p>
<p>The company sends infringement notices to Internet providers on behalf of various copyright holders, including Warner Bros. These notices include a settlement proposal offering alleged downloaders an option to pay off their “debt.”</p>
<p>Not all ISPs are eager to forward these demands to their subscribers. Cox Communications, for example, labels Rightscorp&#8217;s practices as an &#8220;extortion scheme&#8221; and refuses to cooperate. As a result, several copyright holders who work with Rightscorp decided to <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/cox-communications-sued-for-not-disconnecting-pirates-141128/">sue the Internet provider</a> over its inaction late last year. </p>
<p>Cox believes that this suit is an indirect way for Rightscorp to punish the company, as it explained to the court a few days ago (<a href="media/90afab3e.rightsevid.pdf" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/rightsevid.pdf">pdf</a>). </p>
<p>&#8220;Cox refused to participate in Rightscorp’s extortion scheme,&#8221; Cox informs the court, arguing that &#8220;Rightscorp retaliated with this lawsuit.&#8221;</p>
<p>To mount a proper defense the Internet provider has demanded insight into the evidence gathering techniques employed by Rightscorp. Thus far, however, the company has failed to produce all requested information. </p>
<p>&#8220;Now, Rightscorp refuses to produce key categories of documents related to its core activities. Rightscorp has not produced all of its source code modules used for detection of alleged infringements,&#8221; Cox writes. </p>
<p><center><strong>Evidence as presented in a Rightscorp letter</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/22dc38e0.rightsevidence.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/rightsevidence.png" alt="rightsevidence" width="556" height="177" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-107355"></center></p>
<p>The anti-piracy company maintains that it has already handed over all source code, but Cox says it can&#8217;t locate certain elements and points out that Rightscorp has made misleading statements in the past. </p>
<p>&#8220;Rightscorp has repeatedly represented that &#8216;all the code&#8217; has been produced; yet, Cox’s expert has identified multiple components missing from the code that Rightscorp has then belatedly produced,&#8221; Cox explains. </p>
<p>In addition, Cox tells the court that Rightscorp failed to produce other documents that deal with how the company approaches alleged copyright infringers.</p>
<p>They include a script that is used to guide Rightscorp agents in their phone calls, a Rightscorp employee handbook, plus letter templates for Rightscorp’s communications with ISPs. </p>
<p>With various expert reports due soon, Cox has asked the court to issue an order compelling Rightscorp to immediately hand over all missing data and documents.</p>
<p>While Cox does not state how it will use the source code, it&#8217;s presumed that its experts will point out various flaws. For example, Rightscorp presumably lists repeated copyright infringers by IP-address, which is inaccurate since Cox regularly changes subscribers IPs.</p>
<p>Additional details on these and other issues are expected to be revealed this summer. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107367
title: UK Authorities Launch Facebook Piracy Crackdown
uri: UK-Authorities-Launch-Facebook-Piracy-Crackdown
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/R1CAjLpLTCA/
content:
<p><img src="media/15660387.etfacebook.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/etfacebook.png" width="299" height="196" class="alignright">Due to their prevalence among citizens of the UK, Facebook accounts have grown out to become much more than just a place to manage social lives. For some they&#8217;re providing a great way to distribute infringing content and this hasn&#8217;t gone unnoticed by the authorities.</p>
<p>Over the past several weeks enforcement officers have raided a dozen separate locations and are still involved in 22 investigations as part of a Facebook crackdown across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.</p>
<p>Operated by the National Trading Standards eCrime Team alongside the National Markets Group (with members the BPI, Federation against Copyright Theft and the Alliance for Intellectual Property Theft) Operation Jasper is manned by officers from police and government agencies and is reportedly the largest operation of its type. It is targeted at &#8220;criminals&#8221; who exploit social media to commit &#8220;copyright theft&#8221; and sell &#8220;dangerous and counterfeit&#8221; goods.</p>
<p>In the past several weeks officers say they have raided 12 addresses although at this stage there are no reports of any arrests. Facebook itself has also been hit, with 4,300 listings and 20 profiles removed. Authorities say they have sent more than 200 warning letters and 24 cease and desist letters to those they accuse of infringement offenses carried out on Facebook.</p>
<p>In addition to the usual counterfeit items such as t-shirts, tablets and mobile phones, &#8216;pirate&#8217; Android &#8216;streaming&#8217; boxes were targeted yet again. Earlier this month police and trading standards <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-android-tv-box-sellers-raided-by-police-150612/">raided addresses</a> in the north of England in search of the movie and TV show streaming devices, making at least one arrest in the process.</p>
<p>This time around, however, officers appear to have another string to their enforcement bow. While noting that the Android boxes in question do indeed allow the illegal streaming of movies and sports channels, authorities say they also being targeted because they are supplied with &#8216;unsafe&#8217; mains chargers.</p>
<p>Lord Toby Harris, Chair of National Trading Standards, said that his officers have taken important action, especially against those who believe they can operate anonymously online.</p>
<p>“Operation Jasper has struck an important psychological blow against criminals who believe they can operate with impunity on social media platforms without getting caught,&#8221; Harris said.</p>
<p>&#8220;It shows we can track them down, enter their homes, seize their goods and computers and arrest and prosecute them, even if they are operating anonymously online. I commend the National Trading Standards e-Crime team and all other parties involved in this operation.&#8221;</p>
<p>Nick Boles, Minister at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said that consumers need to be wary of consuming pirate content.</p>
<p>“Counterfeiting and piracy of trademarked and copyrighted materials harms legitimate businesses, threatens jobs and pose a real danger to consumers. That’s why we are taking strong action to stop these criminals through the Government’s funding of the National Trading Standards E-Crime Team,&#8221; Boles said.</p>
<p>According to the government&#8217;s latest IP Crime Report, social media has become the &#8220;channel of choice&#8221; for online &#8216;pirate&#8217; activity. In the past several months several of the leading torrent sites have had issues with their Facebook accounts. The Pirate Bay&#8217;s account was shuttered in <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-facebook-down-141217/">December 2014</a> and in May and June 2015, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/facebook-shuts-down-extratorrents-official-page-150515/">ExtraTorrent</a> and <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/facebook-removes-rarbg-page-after-copyright-complaint-150605/">RARBG</a> had their accounts suspended on copyright infringement grounds. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107384
title: Piracy Concerns May Soon Kill Domain Name Privacy
uri: Piracy-Concerns-May-Soon-Kill-Domain-Name-Privacy
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/jS4Y5qJeD44/
content:
<p><img src="media/5d857c82.whoisguard.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/whoisguard.jpg" alt="whoisguard" width="236" height="123" class="alignright size-full wp-image-107388">In recent months copyright holders have been increasingly pushing for changes in the domain name industry. </p>
<p>Groups such as the MPAA and RIAA, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-riaa-demand-dns-action-against-pirate-domains-150514/">for example</a>, want registrars to suspend domain names of clearly infringing websites. </p>
<p>While this is <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/icann-refuses-to-play-piracy-police-150612/">unlikely to happen</a> on a broad scale in the near future, a new ICANN proposal may put an end to private domain name registrations for some websites.</p>
<p>A new proposal (<a href="media/61119ccf.ppsai-initial-05may15-en.pdf" data-original-source="https://gnso.icann.org/en/issues/raa/ppsai-initial-05may15-en.pdf">pdf</a>) will no longer allow &#8216;commercial&#8217; sites, which could include all domain names that run advertisements, to hide their personal details through so-called WHOIS protections services. </p>
<p>This change is backed by copyright holder groups including the MPAA, who previously argued that it will help them to hold the operators of illegal sites responsible.</p>
<p>&#8220;Without accurate WHOIS data, there can be no accountability, and without accountability it can be difficult to investigate and remedy issues when individuals or organizations use the Internet in illegal or inappropriate ways,&#8221; MPAA&#8217;s Alex Deacon said recently.</p>
<p>&#8220;Ensuring this data is accurate is important not only to the MPAA and our members, but also to everyone who uses the Internet every day.&#8221;  </p>
<p>On the other side of the spectrum, the proposal has ignited protests from privacy advocates and key players in the domain name industry.</p>
<p>Digital rights group EFF points out that copyright holders can already expose the operators of alleged infringers quite easily by obtaining a DMCA subpoena. This is something the RIAA <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-orders-whoisguard-to-identify-torrent-site-owner-120114/">has done already</a> on a few occasions.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/06/changes-domain-name-rules-place-user-privacy-jeopardy">EFF</a> further warns that the new rules will expose the personal details of many people who have done nothing wrong, but may have good reasons not to have their address listed publicly. </p>
<p>&#8220;The limited value of this change is manifestly outweighed by the risks to website owners who will suffer a higher risk of harassment, intimidation and identity theft,&#8221; EFF&#8217;s Mitch Stoltz writes.</p>
<p>Namecheap, one of the largest domain registrars, also jumped in and sent a mass-mailing to all their customers urging them to tell ICANN not to adopt the new proposal. </p>
<p>&#8220;No WHOIS privacy provider wants their service to be used to conceal illegal activity, and the vast majority of domain owners are not criminals. Using a WHOIS privacy service is no more suspicious than having an unlisted phone number,&#8221; Namecheap CEO Richard Kirkendall notes</p>
<p>&#8220;These new proposed rules would wreak havoc on our right to privacy online. ICANN is moving quickly, so we should too – contact them today and tell them to respect our privacy,&#8221; he adds.</p>
<p>ICANN is currently <a href="https://www.icann.org/public-comments/ppsai-initial-2015-05-05-en">accepting comments</a> from the public and Namecheap is encouraging its customers to use the <a href="https://www.respectourprivacy.com/">Respect Our Privacy</a> campaign site to protest the proposed changes.</p>
<p>Of course, Namecheap has more to worry about than the privacy of its users alone. The company itself operates the Whoisguard service and earns a lot of revenue through these private registrations. </p>
<p>Thus far most of the responses received by ICANN have come in through the special campaign site, arguing against the proposal. The commenting period closes in two weeks followed by an official report. After that, the ICANN board will still have to vote on whether or not the changes will be implemented.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107424
title: Played.to Operator Admits Guilt in Expendables 3 Leak
uri: Played-to-Operator-Admits-Guilt-in-Expendables-3-Leak
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/5EeDFjhkJXM/
content:
<p><img src="media/d8c73069.expendables2.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/expendables2.jpg" alt="expendables" width="240" height="165" class="alignright size-full wp-image-91653">Last summer LionsGate suffered a major setback when <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/expendables-3-leaks-online-100k-copies-down-in-hours-140725/">a high quality leak</a> of the unreleased Expendables 3 film appeared online.</p>
<p>Fearing a massive loss in revenue, the movie studio <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/lionsgate-sues-filesharing-sites-expendables-3-leak-140801/">sued</a> the operators of several websites that allegedly failed to remove the infringing files.</p>
<p>Over the past several months there has been little progress in the case, but yesterday LionsGate announced that it reached a settlement (<a href="media/731d8822.played-consent.pdf" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/played-consent.pdf">pdf</a>) with one of the accused site operators. </p>
<p>In a new filing at the California district court, Jerome Gillan, the operator of video hosting site Played.to, admits to willful copyright infringement for his role in the controversial leak.</p>
<p>While the video hosting service has nothing to do with the original leak, Gillian played a role by hosting copies of the film and allowing users to watch these through embedded streams. </p>
<p>In addition, the Played.to operator admits that he failed to process or respond to takedown notices before the lawsuit was filed. As a result, he is liable for the resulting infringements under the DMCA. </p>
<p>According to the proposed judgment which has been agreed by both parties, Gillan takes full responsibility by admitting to all claims the movie studio brought against him. </p>
<p>&#8220;Gillan has willfully infringed Lions Gate’s copyright in the Film directly, contributorily and vicariously and is liable for all of the causes of action that Lions Gate has asserted against him in this action,&#8221; the proposed consent judgment reads. </p>
<p>Together both parties inform the court that they&#8217;ve reached a confidential settlement. According to the agreement Gillan has accepted financial and other obligations to resolve Lions Gate’s claims, but how much he has to pay is not disclosed.</p>
<p>In addition, Played.to and its operator are prohibited from &#8220;hosting, linking to, distributing, reproducing, performing, selling, offering for sale, making available for download, streaming or making any other use of any copy or copies of the Film.&#8221;</p>
<p>The proposed judgment only applies to Played.to, the claims against other websites including the torrent search engine Limetorrents.cc remain unsettled.</p>
<p>At the time of writing the Played.to website is still online. The site has lost a lot of traffic in recent months but is still widely used to host videos.</p>
<p>Previously the UK police also <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-police-arrest-two-for-the-expendables-3-movie-leak-141125/">arrested</a> <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-police-arrest-two-for-the-expendables-3-movie-leak-141125/">several</a> people who allegedly leaked the Expendables 3 movie online, but thus far the true source of the leak remains unknown. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107427
title: Warning ‘Strikes’ Don’t Work On Me, Movie Boss Admits
uri: Warning-Strikes-Don-t-Work-On-Me-Movie-Boss-Admits
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/3WLyqgDTwtY/
content:
<p><img src="media/c579e316.pirate-card.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/pirate-card.jpg" alt="pirate-card" width="250" height="210" class="alignright size-full wp-image-86520">As 2015 hits its mid-point, a handful of key strategies are clearly favored by the world&#8217;s largest entertainment companies.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most prominent this year thus far have been efforts to have sites blocked at the ISP level. Most recently Australia went through the months long process of introducing the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015 and last week the Bill <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/australia-passes-pirate-site-blocking-law-150622/">passed the Senate</a>.</p>
<p>Earlier today the legislation received Royal Assent, meaning it is now firmly cast into local law.</p>
<p>With attention now turning to which copyright holders will bring the first site-blocking action (hint: movie industry, within six months), another anti-piracy strategy is almost ready to fly.</p>
<p>After the introduction of the United States&#8217; &#8220;<a href="http://torrentfreak.com/?s=six+strikes">six strikes</a>&#8221; program, in the coming months Aussie citizens are likely to be subjected to <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/aussie-isps-advocate-three-strikes-solution-to-piracy-150220/">a similar &#8220;three strikes&#8221; regime</a>. The idea is that after receiving an &#8220;educational&#8221; notice and then a &#8220;warning&#8221; notice, local Internet pirates will finally comply with the law before receiving a scary &#8220;final notice&#8221;.</p>
<p>This type of regime has the backing of some of the world&#8217;s largest entertainment companies, including the co-chief of Aussie movie giant Village Roadshow. However, despite giving the scheme his backing, Graham Burke has revealed that even people of his stature can be completely immune to government-backed educational efforts.</p>
<p>In an interview published by <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/australian-antipiracy-crusader-graham-burke-on-illicit-downloading-failure-and-exercise-20150626-ghix9f.html">SMH</a> this morning in which he again calls for action against piracy, Burke notes that society wouldn&#8217;t say &#8220;Hey we&#8217;re not going to have legislation against drunken driving or high-speed driving or legislation against stealing.&#8221;</p>
<p>Indeed, for driving offenses, Australia runs a <a href="http://www.transport.wa.gov.au/licensing/demerit-points.asp">demerit system</a>, whereby each logged offense accumulates a set number of points. Get to 12 points and you&#8217;re at risk of getting your license suspended. But of course, the idea is that people will wise up before then and, more importantly, before they end up killing someone.</p>
<p>At its educational core the demerit program is similar to the &#8220;three strikes&#8221; system, albeit with much higher stakes. Trouble is, it doesn&#8217;t work on Burke. In fact, he appears completely immune to the numerous opportunities granted to him by the government.</p>
<p>&#8220;I got a note last night saying I&#8217;d been photographed by a camera in my car exceeding the speed limit and I&#8217;ve lost three points,&#8221; he told tech editor Ben Grubb. &#8220;As I&#8217;ve already lost nine points it&#8217;s rather worrying.&#8221;</p>
<p>While Burke faces having his license suspended for failing to heed the warnings, three-time piracy offenders face having their details handed over to copyright holders who may decide to sue. Of course, Village Roadshow are the major Hollywood-affiliated movie company in Australia, so Burke himself will almost certainly have a hand in who gets sued and when.</p>
<p>Fortunately, it seems that his company won&#8217;t make a habit of taking legal action. Burke says that they won&#8217;t be afraid to sue people &#8220;that act in a criminal way&#8221; but hopefully Village Roadshow &#8220;won&#8217;t have to sue too many people&#8221;.</p>
<p>Indeed, Burke will hope that &#8216;pirates&#8217; take their warnings more seriously than he has done, even though he will have faced fines for his transgressions and they will not. He would&#8217;ve preferred some punishment, he reveals, but is satisfied with the direction of the scheme.</p>
<p>&#8220;A good agreement is when both sides are not deliriously happy but both sides are happy,&#8221; Burke says. &#8220;Am I thrilled? No. Do I think it&#8217;s a good code? Yes.&#8221;</p>
<p>So now all eyes turn to September 1, when the new &#8220;strikes&#8221; code is set to begin. Will the public respond to the warning notices? Or will they bury their heads in the sand like Burke has done until it&#8217;s too late?</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107410
title: Can BitTorrent Be Better With Bitcoin?
uri: Can-BitTorrent-Be-Better-With-Bitcoin
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/PbhtCzZiqdM/
content:
<p><img src="media/fc8163af.bitcoin1.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/bitcoin1.jpg" alt="bitcoin" width="200" height="181" class="alignright size-full wp-image-69038">To millions of users around the world, BitTorrent is a beautiful thing. Not only does it enable the worldwide sharing of any kind of media, but the manner in which it does so is a stroke of pure genius.</p>
<p>Utilizing the bandwidth of all participants in its &#8216;swarms&#8217;, BitTorrent pools the resources of many to provide a streamlined downloading experience for all. It&#8217;s both complex and simplicity itself, a rare quality indeed.</p>
<p>BitTorrent&#8217;s success as a protocol is tied to its low barrier to entry, since anyone with a computer and Internet connection can participate. Above and beyond that no actual money is needed to obtain content. However, the nature of the system means that it&#8217;s not entirely free, since users &#8216;donate&#8217; their bandwidth to others in order to keep a swarm going.</p>
<p>Millions of users are extremely happy with this setup but a proposal from developer Bedeho Mender could see money being brought into the equation.</p>
<p>Bedeho is the founder of JoyStream, a forthcoming BitTorrent client that tries to improve BitTorrent by allowing peer-to-peer Bitcoin payments in exchange for bandwidth &#8211; or content, whichever way one prefers to look at it.</p>
<p>To the torrenting masses, that probably sounds a bit like a tax on air. BitTorrent&#8217;s growth has stemmed from the fact that millions of people are happy to share for free. Is it possible that by introducing money things are going to improve? Bedeho thinks so.</p>
<p>&#8220;BitTorrent has many strengths, but I would say people are often not sharing for free, e.g. in private communities which have far higher quality service. In that context one is required to adhere to strict and cumbersome rules about contributing to maintain ratios, and this makes the system work much better,&#8221; Bedeho tells TorrentFreak.</p>
<p>&#8220;JoyStream is just an open version of that very same insight, except that you now are not forced to seed to maintain your ratio, something which is not practical for everyone. The key is therefore not money, the key is incentives to supply enough bandwidth. Money is just one of many means to try to achieve this, just like we do with other goods.&#8221;</p>
<p>The idea behind JoyStream is simple. If you have some spare bandwidth and content that people want, you can sell access to that content through the JoyStream client. The more common that content the less likely it is that you&#8217;ll be able to charge a premium price for it. Rare material, on the other hand, might be worth someone blowing a few fractions of a bitcoin on.</p>
<p>In very basic terms, if the user tells it to, JoyStream will wind back its upload speed to zero and only open up it up again when someone pays.</p>
<p>One of the claims Bedeho makes about JoyStream is that higher download speeds will be available in this kind of system. The idea is that if seeds are getting paid, they will stick around longer and offer up more bandwidth, a bit like a user on a private torrent site trying to improve his ratio.</p>
<p>&#8220;All paid bandwidth comes from other peers which are paid to supply it. If you do not wish to pay to download, then you would just be using the regular BitTorrent tit-for-tat exchange procedure as is today, and JoyStream also supports that,&#8221; Bedeho explains.</p>
<p>&#8220;With JoyStream it may turn out that people will opt to leave their computer on to earn back whatever they have spent when buying before, so it just becomes a closed loop system. That way you wouldn&#8217;t even be spending any Bitcoins in total, over time. In such a scenario, you should still expect the quality of the open BitTorrent system to be as good, if not better, than in private communities.&#8221;</p>
<p>While earning money for seeding will be attractive to some, will the idea of being in a pay-to-download-faster swarm be off-putting to others? What if JoyStream took off overnight and became a significant player in most swarms?</p>
<p>&#8220;Just like in regular BitTorrent, if no one has a full copy of the file and is willing to seed, then the swarm would get stuck for a while. However, since there is compensation, that is much less likely to happen with JoyStream type peers, precisely because those with a full download will not always leave right away, as is common today,&#8221; Bedeho adds.</p>
<p>While the overall idea certainly provides food for thought, there will undoubtedly be <strong>file-sharing</strong> traditionalists shuddering not only at the mere thought of <strong>file-selling</strong>, but also at the prospect of being denied bandwidth at the hands of someone with more bitcoins to spare.</p>
<p>Finally (and just to throw fuel on the fire) when <a href="http://joystream.co/">JoyStream is out of alpha</a> it should work on private trackers too&#8230;.</p>
<p>&#8220;I do not know how the torrent community will react in total, but since it is an open system, you are free to use or not use it, and I do expect there will be private communities which will ban it, and that is totally fine with me. That is what an open system like BitTorrent/Bitcoin is all about,&#8221; Bedeho concludes.</p>
<p><center><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uj8di5KkoMw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></center></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107406
title: Sci-Hub Tears Down Academia’s “Illegal” Copyright Paywalls
uri: Sci-Hub-Tears-Down-Academia-s-Illegal-Copyright-Paywalls
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/g9ofbStGibQ/
content:
<p><img src="media/f4d28ff9.sci-hub.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/sci-hub.png" alt="sci-hub" width="300" height="166" class="alignright size-full wp-image-107469">With a net income of more than $1 billion Elsevier is one of the largest academic publishers in the world.</p>
<p>The company has the rights to many academic publications where scientists publish their latest breakthroughs. Most of these journals are locked behind paywalls, which makes it impossible for less fortunate researchers to access them. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.sci-hub.club/">Sci-Hub.org</a> is one of the main sites that circumvents this artificial barrier. Founded by Alexandra Elbakyan, a researcher born and graduated in Kazakhstan, its main goal is to provide the less privileged with access to science and knowledge.</p>
<p>The service is nothing like the average pirate site. It wasn&#8217;t started to share the latest Hollywood blockbusters, but to gain access to critical knowledge that researchers require to do their work.</p>
<p>&#8220;When I was working on my research project, I found out that all research papers I needed for work were paywalled. I was a student in Kazakhstan at the time and our university was not subscribed to anything,&#8221; Alexandra tells TF.</p>
<p>After Googling for a while Alexandra stumbled upon various tools and services to bypass the paywalls. With her newly gained knowledge, she then started participating in online forums where other researchers requested papers. </p>
<p>When she noticed how grateful others were for the papers she shared, Alexandra decided to automate the process by developing software that could allow anyone to search for and access papers. That&#8217;s when Sci-Hub was born, back in 2011.</p>
<p>&#8220;The software immediately became popular among Russian researchers. There was no big idea behind the project, like &#8216;make all information free&#8217; or something like that. We just needed to read all these papers to do our research,&#8221; Alexandra.  </p>
<p>&#8220;Now, the goal is to collect all research papers ever published, and make them free,&#8221; she adds.</p>
<p>Of course Alexandra knew that the website could lead to legal trouble. In that regard, the lawsuit filed by Elsevier doesn&#8217;t come as a surprise. However, she is more than willing to fight for the right to access knowledge, as others did before her.</p>
<p>&#8220;Thanks to Elsevier&#8217;s lawsuit, I got past the point of no return. At this time I either have to prove we have the full right to do this or risk being executed like other &#8216;pirates&#8217;,&#8221; she says, naming <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz">Aaron Swartz</a> as an example.</p>
<p>&#8220;If Elsevier manages to shut down our projects or force them into the darknet, that will demonstrate an important idea: that the public does not have the right to knowledge. We have to win over Elsevier and other publishers and show that what these commercial companies are doing is fundamentally wrong.&#8221; </p>
<p>The idea that a commercial outfit can exploit the work of researchers, who themselves are often not paid for their contributions, and hide it from large parts of the academic world, is something she does not accept. </p>
<p>&#8220;Everyone should have access to knowledge regardless of their income or affiliation. And that&#8217;s absolutely legal. Also the idea that knowledge can be a private property of some commercial company sounds absolutely weird to me.&#8221;</p>
<p>Most research institutions in Russia, in developing countries and even in the U.S. and Europe can&#8217;t afford expensive subscriptions. This means that they can&#8217;t access crucial research, including biomedical research such as cancer studies.</p>
<p><center><strong>Elsevier&#8217;s ScienceDirect paywall</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/f1df3f49.sciencedirect.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/sciencedirect.png" alt="sciencedirect" width="600" height="383" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-107467"></center></p>
<p>So aside from the public at large, Sci-Hub is also an essential tool for academics. In fact, some researchers use the site to access their own publications, because these are also locked behind a paywall.</p>
<p>&#8220;The funniest thing I was told multiple times by researchers is that they have to download their own published articles from Sci-Hub. Even authors do not have access to their own work,&#8221; Alexandra says.</p>
<p>Instead of seeing herself as the offender, Alexandra believes that the major academic publishers are the ones who are wrong.</p>
<p>&#8220;I think Elsevier&#8217;s business model is itself illegal,&#8221; she says, pointing to <a href="http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a27">article 27</a> of the UN declaration on human rights which reads that &#8220;everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.&#8221;</p>
<p>The paywalls of Elsevier and other publishers violate this right, she believes. The same article 27 also allows authors to protect their works, but the publishers are not the &#8216;authors,&#8217; they merely exploit the copyrights.</p>
<p>Alexandra insists that her website is legal and hopes that future changes in copyright law will reflect this. As for the Elsevier lawsuit, she&#8217;s not afraid to fight for her rights and already offers a public confession right here.</p>
<p>&#8220;I developed the Sci-Hub.org website where anyone can download paywalled research papers by request. Also I uploaded at least half of more than 41 million paywalled papers to the LibGen database and worked actively to create mirrors of it.</p>
<p>&#8220;I am not afraid to say this, because when you do the right thing, why should you hide it?&#8221; she concludes.</p>
<p>&#8212;</p>
<p><em>Note: Sci-Hub is temporarily using the sci-hub.club domain name. The .org will be operational again next week. </em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107374
title: Anti-Piracy Outfits Boost Numbers With Bogus Takedown Notices
uri: Anti-Piracy-Outfits-Boost-Numbers-With-Bogus-Takedown-Notices
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/LjcToFaKnms/
content:
<p><img src="media/6b19c589.boost.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/boost.png" alt="boost" width="275" height="133" class="alignright size-full wp-image-107489">Four years ago Google decided to publish detailed statistics of all the takedown notices it receives for its search engine. </p>
<p>Since then, the number of requests have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/google-takedown-notices-surge-140325/">skyrocketed</a>. The increase in notices is partly the result of their public nature, with anti-piracy groups proudly revealing how many URLs they have removed. </p>
<p>Over the past several years TF has spoken to insiders on condition of anonymity, and several mentioned that this PR-angle is hurting the validity of the requests. Some anti-piracy outfits are more concerned with the volume of requests than their accuracy.</p>
<p>&#8220;There are a number of automated services sending endless duplicate DMCA Notices to Google,&#8221; said &#8216;Jack,&#8217; the owner of a boutique takedown company. </p>
<p>These duplicate requests include many URLs which have been removed previously (e.g. <a href="http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/requests/2273815/">1</a>, <a href="http://prntscr.com/7lji6m">2</a>, <a href="http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/reporters/21421/Irish-Recorded-Music-Association/">3</a>). This means that they don&#8217;t add anything in terms of effectiveness. However, Google does add them to the overall statistics. </p>
<p>&#8220;Consequently, anti-piracy companies can make it look like they’re doing far more work than they actually are and thus improve their business development, sales or PR story,&#8221; Jack added.</p>
<p>Whether the duplicate notices are intentional or just the result of a shoddy system will be hard to prove conclusively. But they do stand out, together with other dubious issues that boost the numbers. </p>
<p>Earlier this week the operator of popular MP3 search engine MP3Juices.is alerted us to an increasing number of fake notices, listing URLs that were never indexed by Google at all. </p>
<p>Instead of finding pages in Google&#8217;s search engine they list search terms such as the following from a <a href="https://www.chillingeffects.org/notices/10869787">recent takedown request</a>:</p>
<p><em>http://mp3juices.is/search?q=Kay+One+Intro&#038;hash=2accae5374d2477fnprt4f</em></p>
<p>These search pages are not indexed by Google, so can&#8217;t be removed. Also, MP3juices generates a unique hash for each search, but in the notices the same hash is used over and over again for different search terms. </p>
<p>This means that the search URLs are generated through a simple script instead of being the result of actual searches. In addition, the same keywords are used across different sites, as the image below shows.</p>
<p><center><img src="media/9d1c4c81.musosearch1.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/musosearch1.png" alt="musosearch1" width="566" height="164" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-107487"></center></p>
<p>&#8220;MUSO is the main offender, they&#8217;re sending dynamically generated (fake) URLs created by their poorly written script. They don&#8217;t even verify if the page exists,&#8221; MP3Juices informed TF.</p>
<p>In addition, and this is the case for many outfits, most notices sent to Google are not sent to the site which actually hosts or links to the content.</p>
<p>&#8220;Only a minority of the notices are directly sent to us, the vast majority are sent to Google even though we remove reported URLs quicker than Google does. We also replace the page with a message encouraging users to use <a href="https://mp3juices.is/mp3/pussycat-dolls-buttonz">Amazon MP3</a> as a legal alternative,&#8221; MP3Juices said.</p>
<p>MP3Juices is not happy with the bogus takedown notices and plans to report the false claims to Google, not least since Google uses the takedown numbers to downrank websites in its search results.</p>
<p>MUSO didn&#8217;t answer any of our specific questions regarding the non-existing pages and search results, but provided a generic statement. </p>
<p>&#8220;We analyse over 12 million pages of content daily, across thousands of different hosting, streaming, P2P or search sites,&#8221; a MUSO spokesperson said. </p>
<p>&#8220;We are focused on providing a fast, efficient and transparent solution, and we welcome correspondence with all sites with whom we work to remove content, including MP3Juices.&#8221;</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107393
title: Pirate Bay Founder Still Wants to Clear His Name
uri: Pirate-Bay-Founder-Still-Wants-to-Clear-His-Name
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/dvbEH4sxlHg/
content:
<p><img src="media/2ae4dc32.gottfrid.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/gottfrid.jpg" width="174" height="222" class="alignright">Last week and after a technically complex hearing, a jury at the Appeal Court in Denmark again found Gottfrid Svartholm <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bays-gottfrid-svartholm-loses-hacking-appeal-150617/">guilty of hacking IT company CSC</a>. The Pirate Bay founder now has no further opportunity to officially protest his innocence.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, if all goes to plan and considering time served and his good behavior, Gottfrid could be up for parole middle to late August. But in cases involving the now-famous Swede, it will come as no surprise that there are complications.</p>
<p>Gottfrid&#8217;s mother, Kristina Svartholm, informs TorrentFreak that the Swedish Prison and Probation service has requested a Nordic warrant for her son. The reason for this is that Swedish authorities sent Gottfrid to Denmark a month before his <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-hacking-sentence-slashed-in-half-on-appeal-130925/">previous sentence</a> was due to expire in 2013. This means that when he is released from Denmark later this year, he could be sent straight back to prison in Sweden to serve a few more weeks.</p>
<p>But despite the setbacks, Gottfrid remains upbeat.</p>
<p>&#8220;What Gottfrid wants to do now, more than anything else, is to get back to his developmental work within IT (graphics etc),&#8221; Kristina told TF.</p>
<p>&#8220;And, of course, first of all: to sit by a keyboard again after nearly three years away from one.&#8221;</p>
<p>With those days potentially just a few months away (even when taking the Swedish situation into account) some might sit back and accept their fate. However, Gottfrid is still intent on shining light on what he believes was a sub-standard investigation in Denmark and a poor decision from the court when it denied his appeal.</p>
<p>According to Kristina, Gottfrid seriously questions the reports presented by the Danish police and is disappointed by their content, quality and lack of professionalism. &#8220;Clumsy amateurs&#8221; according to the Pirate Bay founder.</p>
<p>In respect of the verdict itself, Gottfrid insists that it contains many &#8220;errors, mistakes and misunderstandings&#8221;. There is even a suspicion that the judges decided on his guilt before the date of the verdict.</p>
<p>&#8220;The final speeches from the defense/the prosecutor respectively were made Monday June 15, 2015. The judges and jury met Tuesday for voting. The verdict was presented Wednesday morning. WHEN was this verdict written?&#8221; Gottfrid questions.</p>
<p>While the answer to that question may never be forthcoming, Gottfrid and Kristina remain determined to shine a light on the Danish investigation and what they both believe to be an extremely flawed legal process.</p>
<p>To that end and in conjunction with Gottfrid, Kristina has penned a 2200+ word document detailing what they believe to be the key points behind an unfair investigation, criminal trial, and subsequent appeal.</p>
<p>It covers plenty of topics, from the encrypted container found on Gottfrid&#8217;s computer to a chat log that became central to linking him to the case, despite it being highly edited by the authorities.</p>
<p>Also of interest are the details of discussions secretly recorded by the police that potentially place Gottfrid in the clear, but were still ignored by the Appeal Court. </p>
<p>The report can be downloaded <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/images/After-Östre-Landsret.rtf">here (RTF)</a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107516
title: Malwarebytes Offers Pirates Free “Amnesty” Keys
uri: Malwarebytes-Offers-Pirates-Free-Amnesty-Keys
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/byTjnjDITUg/
content:
<p><img src="media/82bbf090.malwarebytes1.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/malwarebytes1.jpg" alt="malwarebytes1" width="200" height="200" class="alignright size-full wp-image-107528">Like most other popular software, <a href="https://www.malwarebytes.org">Malwarebytes</a> has many unauthorized users who use cracks or keygens to unlock the programs paid features. </p>
<p>Traditionally, Malwarebytes has taken a fairly lenient stance towards pirates. Two years ago the company started tracking down this group of users, asking them kindly <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/malwarebytes-detects-pirates-asks-them-not-to-steal-software-130608/">not to steal the software</a>.</p>
<p>Now, the San Jose company has a <a href="http://techdows.com/2015/06/malwarebytes-converts-pirate-keys-to-premium-ones.html">new surprise</a> in store. A few days ago Malwarebytes began scanning for pirate and counterfeit keys, as part as an upgrade of its licensing system. </p>
<p>Those found to have used an &#8220;abused&#8221; key then get the &#8220;<a href="https://www.malwarebytes.org/lp/amnesty/?">amnesty</a>&#8221; option to upgrade their software for a year without any cost, replacing the pirate key with a legitimate one. </p>
<p>&#8220;Malwarebytes is offering a free replacement key for Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Premium customers who have been inconvenienced by piracy or abuse. This new key will be exclusive to you going forward,&#8221; the company explains on its website.</p>
<p><center><strong>Malwarebytes free upgrade</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/23490388.malwarebytes.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/malwarebytes.jpg" alt="malwarebytes" width="600" height="362" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-107529"></center> </p>
<p>While the offer is certainly generous, it&#8217;s also a necessity because legitimate and pirate keys are often duplicates. This means that pirates and paid users have the same keys.</p>
<p>Going forward, Malwarebytes will use a <a href="https://forums.malwarebytes.org/index.php?/topic/169811-mb-offering-free-lifetime-license-to-users-op-pirated-copies-i-would-like-my-money-back/?p=972346">more advanced</a> license key algorithm which prevents this from happening. This means that it will be harder for pirates to get a free copy after their one year subscription expires.</p>
<p>Interestingly, those who choose the second &#8220;I purchased my key&#8221; option get a lifetime subscription at no cost.</p>
<p>Malwarebytes’ Bruce Harrison previously told TorrentFreak that they don&#8217;t plan to crack down too hard on pirates.</p>
<p>&#8220;Piracy is not really a huge problem for us in my opinion. There are a lot of people who simply won’t pay for our software and being aggressive against them won’t change that,” Harrison said.</p>
<p>Offering amnesty to pirates is in line with this stance. It certainly isn&#8217;t an aggressive move and could even trigger some to pay up when the free offer runs out. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107518
title: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week – 06/29/15
uri: Top-10-Most-Pirated-Movies-of-The-Week-06-29-15
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/8wCePzQaYMI/
content:
<p><img src="media/3516e203.mm1.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/mm1.jpg" alt="mm" width="300" height="207" class="alignright size-full wp-image-107520">This week we have four newcomers in our chart.</p>
<p>Mad Max: Fury Road 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 BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.</p>
<p><a href="http://TorrentFreak.com/category/dvdrip/feed/"><strong>RSS feed</strong></a> for the weekly movie download chart.</p>
<table class="css hover">
<thead>
<tr>
<th width="12%"><strong>Ranking</strong></th>
<th width="15%"><strong>(<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-movies-of-the-week-062215/">last week</a>)</strong></th>
<th><strong>Movie</strong></th>
<th width="18%"><strong>IMDb Rating / Trailer</strong></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tfoot>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">torrentfreak.com</td>
</tr>
</tfoot>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><strong>1</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mad_max_fury_road/?">Mad Max: Fury Road</a> (Webrip)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392190/">8.5</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjBb4SZ0F6Q">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>2</strong></td>
<td>(2)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jurassic_world/">Jurassic World</a> (TS)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0369610/">7.7</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFinNxS5KN4">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>3</strong></td>
<td>(3)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/cinderella_2013/">Cinderella</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1661199/">7.3</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRuHM6rLSF8">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>4</strong></td>
<td>(1)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/get_hard/">Get Hard</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2561572/">6.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEqrpuU9fYI">trailer</a></td>
<tr>
<td><strong>5</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_longest_ride">The Longest Ride</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2726560/">7.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUS_Q7FsfqU">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>6</strong></td>
<td>(4)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/run_all_night/">Run All Night</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2199571/">6.7</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uDuFh-nC-c">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>7</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/paul_blart_mall_cop_2/">Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3450650/">4.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmD2vogB6yE">trailer</a></td>
<tr>
<td><strong>8</strong></td>
<td>(5)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/kingsman_the_secret_service/">Kingsman: The Secret Service</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2802144/">8.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl8F-8tR8to">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>9</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/inside_out_2015/">Inside Out</a> (TS)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2096673/">8.8</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seMwpP0yeu4">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>10</strong></td>
<td>(9)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/771418863/">San Andreas Quake</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4547120/">2.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-fSiFJcw9k">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107539
title: Cloudflare Reveals Pirate Site Locations in an Instant
uri: Cloudflare-Reveals-Pirate-Site-Locations-in-an-Instant
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/5oMfC47Myew/
content:
<p><img src="media/4a535cc9.cloudflare.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/cloudflare.png" alt="cloudflare" width="275" height="188" class="alignright size-full wp-image-96401">Five years ago, discovering the physical location of almost any &#8216;pirate&#8217; site was achievable in a matter of seconds using widely available online tools. All one needed was an IP address and a <a href="http://www.iplocation.net/">simple lookup</a>.</p>
<p>As sites became more aware of the need for security, cloaking efforts became more commonplace. Smaller sites, private trackers in particular, began using tunnels and proxies to hide their true locations, hampering anti-piracy efforts in the process. Later these kinds of techniques were used on even the largest sites, The Pirate Bay for example.</p>
<p>In the meantime the services of a rising company called Cloudflare had begun to pique the interest of security-minded site owners. Designed to optimize the performance of sites while blocking various kinds of abuse, Cloudflare-enabled sites get to exchange their regular IP address for one operated by Cloudflare, a neat side-effect for a site wishing to remain in the shadows.</p>
<p><center><img src="media/5c4327fc.cloud-pir.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/cloud-pir.jpg" alt="cloud-pir" width="600" height="300" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-107549"></center></p>
<p>Today, Cloudflare &#8216;protects&#8217; dozens &#8211; perhaps hundreds &#8211; of &#8216;pirate&#8217; sites. Some use Cloudflare for its anti-DDoS capabilities but all get to hide their real IP addresses from copyright holders. This has the <em>potential</em> to reduce the amount of DMCA notices and other complaints filtering through to their real hosts.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, however, belief persists in some quarters that Cloudflare is an impenetrable shield that allows &#8216;pirate&#8217; sites to operate completely unhindered. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.</p>
<p>In recent days a perfect example appeared in the shape of Sparvar (Sparrows), a Swedish torrent site that has been <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/canadian-police-raid-bittorrent-tracker-confiscate-server-140514/">regularly hounded</a> by anti-piracy outfit Rights Alliance. Sometime after <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/how-sweden-gained-access-to-a-canada-hosted-torrent-site-140517/">moving to Canada</a> in 2014, Sparvar began using the services of Cloudflare, which effectively cloaked the site&#8217;s true location from the world. Well, that was the theory.</p>
<p>According to an announcement from the site, Rights Alliance lawyer Henrik Pontén recently approached Cloudflare in an effort to uncover Sparvar&#8217;s email address and the true location of its servers. The discussions between Rights Alliance and Cloudflare were seen by Sparvar, which set alarm bells ringing.</p>
<p>&#8220;After seeing the conversations between Rights Alliance and server providers / CloudFlare we urge staff of other Swedish trackers to consider whether the risk they&#8217;re taking is really worth it,&#8221; site staff said.</p>
<p>&#8220;All that is required is an email to CloudFlare and then [anti-piracy companies] will have your IP address.&#8221;</p>
<p>As a result of this reveal, Sparvar is now offline. No site or user data has been compromised but it appears that the site felt it best to close down, at least for now.</p>
<p><center><img src="media/e12e3ab7.spar-down.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/spar-down.jpg" alt="spar-down" width="600" height="297" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-107553"></center></p>
<p>This obviously upset users of the site, some of whom emailed TorrentFreak to express disappointment at the way the situation was handled by Cloudflare. However, Cloudflare&#8217;s terms and conditions should leave no doubt as to how the company handles these kinds of complaints.</p>
<p>One clause in which Cloudflare reserves the right to investigate not only sites but also their operators, it&#8217;s made crystal clear what information may be given up to third parties.</p>
<p>&#8220;You acknowledge that CloudFlare may, at its own discretion, reveal the information about your web server to alleged copyright holders or other complainants who have filed complaints with us,&#8221; the company <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/terms">writes</a>.</p>
<p>The situation is further underlined when Cloudflare receives DMCA notices from copyright holders and forwards an alert to a site using its services.</p>
<p>&#8220;We have provided the name of your hosting provider to the reporter. Additionally, we have forwarded this complaint to your hosting provider as well,&#8221; the site&#8217;s abuse team <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=%22We+have+provided+the+name+of+your+hosting+provider+to+the+reporter.+Additionally%2C+we+have+forwarded+this+complaint+to+your+hosting+provider+as+well.+%22&#038;ie=utf-8&#038;oe=utf-8">regular advises</a>.</p>
<p>While Cloudflare itself tends not to take direct action against sites it receives complaints about, problems can mount if a copyright holder is persistent enough. Just recently Cloudflare was <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/court-orders-cloudflare-to-disconnect-new-grooveshark-150605/">ordered by a U.S. court</a> to discontinue services to a Grooveshark replacement. That site is yet to reappear.</p>
<p>Finally, Sparvar staff have some parting advice for other site operators hoping to use Cloudflare services without being uncovered.</p>
<p>&#8220;We hope that you do not have your servers directly behind CloudFlare which means a big security risk. We hope and believe that you are also running some kind of reverse proxy,&#8221; the site concludes.</p>
<p>At the time of publication, Henrik Pontén of Rights Alliance had not responded to our requests for comment.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=106825
title: Court Orders Namecheap to Identify Pirate Site Operator
uri: Court-Orders-Namecheap-to-Identify-Pirate-Site-Operator
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/FZxkfd9ojRM/
content:
<p><img src="media/318f6a20.namecheap.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/namecheap.png" alt="namecheap" width="237" height="97" class="alignright size-full wp-image-107544">Last month the long running lawsuit between the RIAA and Grooveshark <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/grooveshark-shuts-down-apologizes-to-the-riaa-150501/">came to an end</a>. However, within days a new site was launched <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/resurrected-grooveshark-is-actually-an-mp3juices-clone-150506/">aiming to take its place</a>. </p>
<p>The RIAA wasn&#8217;t happy with this development and quickly <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/record-labels-sue-new-grooveshark-seize-domains-150515/">obtained a restraining order</a>, preventing domain registrars and hosting companies from offering their services to the site. </p>
<p>In a response <a href="https://www.namecheap.com/">Namecheap</a> quickly suspended the site&#8217;s account. However, the &#8220;new&#8221; Grooveshark then relocated elsewhere and as of today the RIAA is still in the dark as to the identity of the owner. </p>
<p>Hoping to track this person down the music labels recently filed a motion to conduct expedited discovery. This would allow them to order third party services to hand over all personal information they have on the site&#8217;s operator. </p>
<p>&#8220;Defendants have continued to operate the  counterfeit Service, concealing their identities and using multiple infringing domain names registered through at least three different domain name registrars,&#8221; the RIAA&#8217;s lawyers wrote in their motion.</p>
<p>According to the RIAA, help from other services is needed as they have &#8220;no alternative methods&#8221; to find out who is operating the &#8220;revived&#8221; Grooveshark site.</p>
<p>Late last week New York District Court Judge Alison Nathan agreed with the music labels, granting the motion against Namecheap and several other service providers (<a href="media/840265db.grooveexp.pdf" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/grooveexp.pdf">pdf</a>). </p>
<p>In addition to Namecheap the court filing specifically mentions the &#8220;proxy&#8221; provider Cloudflare, domain name registrar Dynadot and hosting provider Nodisto. </p>
<p>The RIAA expects that these organizations will have crucial information including payment details and IP-addresses. Thus far none of the third-party service providers have objected to the order, and it&#8217;s unlikely that they will. </p>
<p>Coincidentally, Namecheap <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-concerns-may-soon-kill-domain-name-privacy-150625/">launched a campaign</a> last week urging its users to protest a new proposal that would put an end to private domain name registrations for some site owners. However, the company does not object to court orders and has complied with similar ones previously.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107608
title: Organized Crime Police Raid ‘Pirate’ Android TV Box Sellers
uri: Organized-Crime-Police-Raid-Pirate-Android-TV-Box-Sellers
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/I2DxTMVDnZE/
content:
<p><img src="media/86968eca.kodi.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/kodi.jpg" width="200" height="200" class="alignright">As highlighted in a <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/when-piracy-gets-too-easy-expect-a-big-response-150620/">TorrentFreak report</a> earlier this month, anti-piracy outfits are running out of patience with the proliferation of software and devices that allow for movies, TV shows and sports to be pirated and streamed with ease.</p>
<p><a href="http://torrentfreak.com/?s=popcorn+time">Popcorn Time</a> and Kodi/XBMC derivatives are the industry&#8217;s primary targets and their installation in hardware devices including cheap Android-style set-top boxes is clearly becoming a real thorn in its side. Earlier this month police carried out <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-android-tv-box-sellers-raided-by-police-150612/">several raids</a> in the UK and today comes news of yet more operations, complete with accompanying video.</p>
<p>After a joint investigation by the Metropolitan Police and the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) into the sales of set-top boxes programmed to provide access to movies, TV shows, live sports and subscription channels without permission, officers raided locations in the south and Midlands areas of the country.</p>
<p>In what appears to be the largest raid today, officers from the Metropolitan Police carried out raids in Feltham, Middlesex. A 48-year-old-man and a woman were arrested and more than 1,000 set-top boxes were seized.</p>
<p>Further north in the West Midlands town of Walsall, police seized &#8220;dozens&#8221; of pieces of electronics including set-top boxes, computers and sat nav systems. A 50-year-old man was voluntarily interviewed by police and FACT investigators.</p>
<p>While police and FACT involvement indicate that the authorities are taking these devices seriously, today raids were also assisted by officers from the West Midlands Regional Organized Crime Unit (ROCU) and the Government Agency Intelligence Network (<a href="http://www.securityandpolicing.co.uk/regional-organised-crime-units-rocus/">GAIN</a>). Completing what the Brits might call a &#8220;full house&#8221;, Trading Standards officers were also involved in the operation. </p>
<p>“The proliferation of IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) and set-top boxes along with apps and add-ons that facilitate illegal streams have created new opportunities for piracy and the delivery of stolen content,&#8221; said FACT Director General Kieron Sharp.</p>
<p>“As today’s action demonstrates, we are working in close partnership with our colleagues in law enforcement on addressing these threats and are committed to bringing those responsible to account.”</p>
<p>GAIN Co-ordinator Jason Grove underlined the high level of agency cooperation evident in this morning&#8217;s raids. </p>
<p>“Today’s action is an excellent example of our multi-agency working across force boundaries to tackle serious and organized crime,&#8221; Grove said.</p>
<p>“These kinds of offenses cost the economy and in particular the film and television industry tens of thousands of pounds each year and today shows that we will take action against those involved.&#8221;</p>
<p>Finally, in a further indication that the authorities and FACT want these operations to be highly visible, a video of one of the raids.</p>
<p><center><iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2bNW-dpDipw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></center></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107576
title: French Magazine Fined €10,000 For Encouraging Piracy
uri: French-Magazine-Fined-10-000-For-Encouraging-Piracy
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/IcUAby9_cNc/
content:
<p><img src="media/59d6682b.download-keyboard.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/download-keyboard.jpg" alt="download-keyboard" width="200" height="138" class="alignright size-full wp-image-73383">Last summer the bimonthly computer magazine &#8220;Téléchargement,&#8221; French for &#8220;Download,&#8221; released an issue documenting the various ways people can pirate films, TV-shows, games and music on the Internet. </p>
<p>The cover featured a pirate skull and advertised &#8220;the best software and websites to download for free.&#8221; </p>
<p>The local music industry group <a href="http://www.scpp.fr/SCPP/">SCPP</a> was appalled by the controversial issue and decided to take legal action in response. According to the group&#8217;s CEO Marc Guez the magazine publishers had gone too far.</p>
<p>&#8220;A line had been crossed,&#8221; Guez told <a href="http://www.nextinpact.com/news/95589-un-magazine-condamne-a-10-000-euros-d-amende-pour-incitation-au-piratage.htm">Next INpact</a>. &#8220;This is a magazine which clearly and shamelessly incited piracy. That&#8217;s what prompted us to act.&#8221;</p>
<p>The music industry group highlighted what they believe were inciting passages. For example, it described torrent clients such as uTorrent and BitComet, noting that it&#8217;s easy to find infringing content through Google search. </p>
<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s no need to dive into the depths of the deep Web for pirate downloads, Google will make sure they&#8217;ll surface. With some clever keywords and in a handful of clicks you will fill your hard drives with joy and laughter,&#8221; it read.</p>
<p>&#8220;We offer an overview of the best torrent clients plus some tips and tricks to entertain you,&#8221; the magazine added. </p>
<p>Other passages of the magazine mentioned specific tips and websites where pirated content is available, mentioning how easy it is to download movies and music without paying for it. </p>
<p>SCPP took the magazine publisher to court claiming it had violated <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DADVSI">French copyright law</a>. Specifically, they argued that the publisher willingly encouraged its readers to use software that&#8217;s predominantly used to share copyright infringing material. </p>
<p>Under French law it&#8217;s forbidden to &#8220;knowingly encourage&#8221; the use of software that&#8217;s clearly meant to infringe copyrights, with a maximum prison sentence of three years and a €300,000 fine.</p>
<p>The publisher contested the claims, noting that the magazine repeatedly emphasized that piracy is illegal. However, according to the court this was not enough. </p>
<p>Earlier this month the court of Nanterre handed down its <a href="http://www.scpp.fr/SCPP/tabid/462/default.aspx&#038;usg=ALkJrhgYXRiCQfohE0L6jiUUmVR3DbC1mA">verdict</a> ruling that the publisher indeed went too far. The court issued a €10,000 fine, which is roughly the amount that was made through the sale of the magazine. </p>
<p>The music industry is happy with the outcome, noting that it&#8217;s the first time that a news outlet has been found guilty of inciting piracy under this section of copyright law. The ruling is final and can&#8217;t be appealed.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107587
title: Google Scolds MPAA’s “Cozy” Anti-Piracy Lobby in Court
uri: Google-Scolds-MPAA-s-Cozy-Anti-Piracy-Lobby-in-Court
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/P4mvQrTMG90/
content:
<p><img src="media/c6c36e0a.googlepop.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/googlepop.jpg" alt="googlepop" width="250" height="141" class="alignright size-full wp-image-106435">Late last year leaked documents from the Sony hack revealed that the MPAA helped Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood to revive SOPA-like censorship efforts in the United States.</p>
<p>In a retaliatory move Google sued the Attorney General, hoping to find out more about the secret plan. The company also demanded internal communication from the MPAA and its lawfirm Jenner &#038; Block. </p>
<p>After the Hollywood group and its lawyers refused to provide all information Google asked for, a <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/google-takes-mpaa-to-court-over-secret-censorship-plans-150603/">separate legal battle</a> began with both sides using rather strong language to state their case.</p>
<p>The MPAA accused Google of <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-google-assists-and-profits-from-piracy-150617/">facilitating piracy</a> and objected to a request to transfer the case to Mississippi, where the underlying case was started. According to the movie industry group and its lawyers they are merely bystanders who want to resolve the matter in a Washington court.</p>
<p>This week Google responded to the MPAA opposition with a scathing reply, which outs the cozy relationship between the MPAA and the Attorney General&#8217;s office. </p>
<p>&#8220;Their rhetoric does not match reality,&#8221; Google responds (<a href="media/53d6368f.Googlereply1.pdf" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/Googlereply1.pdf">pdf</a>) to the request not to transfer the case. &#8220;The MPAA and Jenner are no strangers to Mississippi.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;The Subpoenaed Parties sought out Mississippi when they co-opted the state’s Attorney General for their anti-Google campaign. Documents withheld by the MPAA until last week reveal a stunning level of involvement in Mississippi’s affairs.&#8221; </p>
<p>According to Google it&#8217;s clear that the MPAA and its law firm were in &#8220;intimate contact&#8221; with the Attorney General, offered monetary donations, hosted fundraisers and also helped him to draft legal paperwork.</p>
<p>&#8220;According to the Subpoenaed Parties, they are strangers to Mississippi. But documents produced last week by the MPAA tell a very different story. The Subpoenaed Parties and their representatives made repeated visits to AG Hood’s office in Mississippi to guide his anti-Google work.&#8221; </p>
<p>&#8220;Even when they weren’t physically at AG Hood’s office, they may as well have been, getting together with him in Denver and Santa Monica and holding a fundraising dinner for him in New Orleans.&#8221;</p>
<p>And there is more. The emails the MPAA recently produced also reveal &#8220;remarkably cozy and constant communications&#8221; between the MPAA and the Attorney General&#8217;s office. </p>
<p>In one email the MPAA’s Brian Cohen greeted one of Hood&#8217;s staffers with “Hello my favorite” offering to share pictures of his vacation in New Zealand via Dropbox. In another email discussing a meeting with the AG&#8217;s staff, MPAA’s Cohen writes “OMG we spent 3 hours.”</p>
<p><center><img src="media/59c1c527.favorite.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/favorite.png" alt="favorite" width="584" height="534" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-107603"></center></p>
<p>According to Google the examples above clearly show that there&#8217;s a rather close relationship between the MPAA&#8217;s lobbyists and the Attorney General.</p>
<p>&#8220;This pattern of sustained, intimate contact is hardly the mark of a party that merely &#8216;communicated with Attorney General Hood&#8217; &#8216;previously,&#8217; as the MPAA characterizes itself.&#8221;  </p>
<p>Throwing in a movie reference, Google further notes that transferring the case would be in line with Rule 45, which ties the subpoena to the Mississippi case.</p>
<p>&#8220;But it is not merely the Subpoenaed Parties’ starring role in the underlying events that warrants transfer of Google’s Motions to Compel to Judge Wingate in Mississippi; all of the Rule 45 factors support it as well,&#8221; Google notes. </p>
<p>The reply continues adding more support and arguments to transfer the case, using more strong language, and the sarcastic-aggressive tone continues throughout. </p>
<p>If we hadn&#8217;t seen enough evidence already, the filing makes it clear that the MPAA and Google are not on speaking terms, to say the least. And with the Attorney General case just getting started, things may get even worse. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107596
title: VPN Providers Respond To Allegations of Data Leakage
uri: VPN-Providers-Respond-To-Allegations-of-Data-Leakage
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/WniHHihHaEg/
content:
<p><img src="media/b45c88a8.vpn4life.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/vpn4life.jpg" alt="vpn4life" width="180" height="197" class="alignright size-full wp-image-8252">As Internet users seek to bypass censorship, boost privacy and achieve a level of anonymity, VPN services have stepped in with commercial solutions to assist with these aims. The uptake among consumers has been impressive.</p>
<p>Reviews of VPN services are commonplace and usually base their ratings on price and speed. At TorrentFreak we examine many <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">services annually</a>, but with a focus on privacy issues instead.</p>
<p>Now a team of researchers from universities in London and Rome have published a paper titled <em>A Glance through the VPN Looking Glass: IPv6 Leakage and DNS Hijacking in Commercial VPN clients. (<a href="media/a3e82803.PETS2015VPN.pdf" data-original-source="http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~hamed/papers/PETS2015VPN.pdf">pdf</a>)</em> after investigating 14 popular services on the market today.</p>
<p>&#8220;Our findings confirm the criticality of the current situation: many of these providers leak all, or a critical part of the user traffic in mildly adversarial environments. The reasons for these failings are diverse, not least the poorly defined, poorly explored nature of VPN usage, requirements and threat models,&#8221; the researchers write.</p>
<p>While noting that all providers are able to successfully send data through an encrypted tunnel, the paper claims that problems arise during the second stage of the VPN client&#8217;s operation: traffic redirection.</p>
<p>&#8220;The problem stems from the fact that <a href="http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/routing-table">routing tables</a> are a resource that is concurrently managed by the operating system, which is unaware of the security requirements of the VPN client,&#8221; the researchers write.</p>
<p>This means that changes to the routing table (whether they are malicious or accidental) could result in traffic circumventing the VPN tunnel and leaking to other interfaces.</p>
<p><strong>IPv6 VPN Traffic Leakage</strong></p>
<p>&#8220;The vulnerability is driven by the fact that, whereas all VPN clients manipulate the IPv4 routing table, they tend to ignore the IPv6 routing table. No rules are added to redirect IPv6 traffic into the tunnel. This can result in all IPv6 traffic bypassing the VPN’s virtual interface,&#8221; the researchers explain.</p>
<p><center><img src="media/3fc4b247.vpn-1.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/vpn-1.png" alt="vpn-1" width="600" height="231" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-107599"></center></p>
<p>As illustrated by the chart above, the paper claims that all desktop clients (except for those provided by Private Internet Access, Mullvad and VyprVPN) leaked &#8220;the entirety&#8221; of IPv6 traffic, while all providers except Astrill were vulnerable to IPv6 DNS hijacking attacks.</p>
<p>The paper was covered yesterday by <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/30/worlds_best_vpns_fall_flat_in_security_tests/">The Register</a> with the scary-sounding title <em>&#8220;VPNs are so insecure you might as well wear a KICK ME sign&#8221;</em> but without any input from the providers in question. We decided to contact a few of them for their take on the paper.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.purevpn.com/">PureVPN</a> told TF that they &#8220;take the security of our customers very seriously and thus, a dedicated team has been assigned to look into the matter.&#8221; Other providers had already received advanced notice of the paper.</p>
<p>&#8220;At least for AirVPN the paper is outdated,&#8221; <a href="https://airvpn.org/">AirVPN</a> told TorrentFreak.</p>
<p>&#8220;We think that the researchers, who kindly sent the paper to us many months in advance and were warned about that, had no time to fix [the paper] before publication. There is nothing to worry about for AirVPN.&#8221;</p>
<p>&#8220;Current topology allows us to have the same IP address for VPN DNS server and VPN gateway, solving the vulnerability at its roots, months before the publication of the paper.&#8221;</p>
<p><a href="https://torguard.net/">TorGuard</a> also knew of the whitepaper and have been working to address the issues it raises. The company adds that while The Register&#8217;s &#8220;the sky is falling&#8221; coverage of yesterday is &#8220;deceptive&#8221;, the study does illustrate the need for providers to stay vigilant. Specifically, TorGuard says that it has launched a new IPv6 leak prevention feature on Windows, Mac and Linux.</p>
<p>&#8220;Today we have released a new feature that will address this issue by giving users the option of capturing ALL IPv6 traffic and forcing it through the OpenVPN tunnel. During our testing this method proved highly effective in blocking potential IPv6 leaks, even in circumstances when these services were active or in use on the client’s machine,&#8221; the company reports.</p>
<p>On the DNS hijacking issue, TorGuard provides the following detail.</p>
<p>&#8220;It is important to note that the potential for this exploit only exists (in theory) if you are connected to a compromised WiFi network in which the attacker has gained full control of the router. If that is the case, DNS hijacking is only the beginning of one’s worries,&#8221; TorGuard notes.</p>
<p>&#8220;During our own testing of TorGuard’s OpenVPN app, we were unable to reproduce this when using private DNS servers because any DNS queries can only be accessed from within the tunnel itself.&#8221;</p>
<p>Noting that they released IPv6 Leak Protection in October 2013, leading VPN provider <a href="https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/">Private Internet Access</a> told TorrentFreak that they feel the paper is lacking.</p>
<p>&#8220;While the article purported to be an unbiased and intricate look into the security offered by consumer VPN services, it was greatly flawed since the inputs or observations made by the researchers were inaccurate,&#8221; PIA said.</p>
<p>&#8220;While a scientific theory or scientific test can be proven by a logical formula or algorithm, if the observed or collected data is incorrect, the conclusion will be in error as well.&#8221;</p>
<p>PIA criticizes the report on a number of fronts, including incorrect claims about its DNS resolver. </p>
<p>&#8220;Contrary to the report, we have our own private DNS daemon running on the Choopa network.  Additionally, the DNS server that is reported, while it is a real DNS resolver, is not the actual DNS that your system will use when connected to the VPN,&#8221; the company explains.</p>
<p>&#8220;Your DNS requests are handled by a local DNS resolver running on the VPN gateway you are connected to.  This can be easily verified through a site like ipleak.net.  Additionally&#8230; we do not allow our DNS servers to report IPv6 (AAAA records) results.  We&#8217;re very serious about security and privacy.&#8221;</p>
<p>Finally, in a comprehensive response (now <a href="https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/forum/discussion/comment/30853/#Comment_30853">published here</a>) in which it notes that its Windows client is safe, PIA commends the researchers for documenting the DNS hijacking method but criticizes how it was presented to the VPN community.</p>
<p>&#8220;The DNS Hijacking that the author describes [..] is something that has recently been brought to light by these researchers and we commend them on their discovery. Proper reporting routines would have been great, however. Shamefully, this is improper security disclosure,&#8221; PIA adds.</p>
<p>While non-IPv6 users have nothing to fear, all users looking for a simple fix can disable IPv6 by following instructions for <a href="https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929852">Windows</a>, <a href="http://ask.xmodulo.com/disable-ipv6-linux.html">Linux</a> and <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202237">Mac</a>. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107639
title: Kim Dotcom Appeals to Reclaim ‘Mega Millions’ from U.S.
uri: Kim-Dotcom-Appeals-to-Reclaim-Mega-Millions-from-U-S
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/AgTh3MkHde4/
content:
<p><img src="media/5fd37436.megaupload.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/megaupload.jpg" alt="megaupload" width="180" height="154" class="alignright size-full wp-image-30407">Following the 2012 raid on Megaupload and Kim Dotcom, U.S. and New Zealand authorities seized millions of dollars in cash and other property.</p>
<p>Claiming the assets were obtained through copyright and money laundering crimes, last July the U.S. government launched a separate civil action in which it asked the court to forfeit the bank accounts, cars and other seized possessions of the Megaupload defendants.</p>
<p>Megaupload’s defense heavily protested the request but was found to have no standing, as Dotcom and his colleagues were branded &#8220;fugitives&#8221;.</p>
<p>Earlier this year District Court Judge Liam O’Grady ordered a default judgment in favor of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). As a result the contested assets, which are worth an estimated $67 million, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-wins-dozens-of-millions-from-kim-dotcom-150326/">now belong to the United States</a>.</p>
<p>Today Kim Dotcom and his Megaupload co-defendants appealed this decision at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. In their opening brief (<a href="media/b659cd0a.Megaupload-Final-Brief.pdf" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/Megaupload-Final-Brief.pdf">pdf</a>) Megaupload&#8217;s lawyers argue that the court denied the defendants&#8217; basic rights and violated due process. </p>
<p>&#8220;The recent filing demonstrates again how the entire Megaupload case is build on quicksand. It&#8217;s a slap in the face of the DOJ and the Judge they picked for his Disney CV,&#8221; Dotcom tells TF in a comment.</p>
<p>In particular, the appeal filing points out that it was wrong to rely on the &#8216;<a href="http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-government-brands-kim-dotcom-fugitive-spies-others-141120/">fugitive disentitlement</a>&#8216; doctrine, as Dotcom and his former colleagues were merely exercising their legal right to defend themselves.  </p>
<p>“The Megaupload defendants were branded by the DOJ as &#8216;fugitives&#8217; for lawfully fighting extradition in New Zealand,&#8221; Megaupload Appellate Counsel Michael Elkin notes.</p>
<p>&#8220;The district court&#8217;s denial of their basic rights to defend against asset forfeiture under a &#8216;fugitive disentitlement&#8217; doctrine amounts to a violation of basic due process,&#8221; he adds. </p>
<p>Ira Rothken, Kim Dotcom&#8217;s Lead Global Counsel, emphasizes the injustice of the District Court decision and reiterates that his client has never even set a foot on U.S. soil. </p>
<p>“With our appeal today we are asking the Fourth Circuit to rule in favor of fairness, natural justice, and due process by stopping US efforts to take Kim Dotcom&#8217;s global assets for doing nothing more than lawfully opposing extradition to the United States—a country he has never been to,&#8221; he says. </p>
<p>According to Rothken the U.S. went after the millions in assets to obstruct other legal proceedings, including the extradition case which will be heard in New Zealand later this year.</p>
<p>&#8220;The DOJ in our view is trying to abuse the Fugitive Disentitlement Doctrine by modifying it into an offensive weapon of asset forfeiture to punish those who fight extradition under lawful treaties, and a provocation for international discord. Today we ask the Court of Appeals for justice.”</p>
<p>The 79-page opening brief concludes with a stark warning. </p>
<p>If the District Court decision is upheld it would give the government unprecedented power, allowing it to indict foreigners and grab their assets without looking into the merits of the case. </p>
<p>&#8220;That is not how our justice system works. The judgments below should be vacated and the case either dismissed or remanded for trial on the merits,&#8221; Megaupload&#8217;s lawyers conclude.</p>
<p>Dotcom is glad to see that the appeal is finally underway and points out that Megaupload was taken down by corrupt forces in the U.S. Government. </p>
<p>&#8220;They did not have the right to take billions of files from millions of Megaupload users offline. But a corrupt Senator (Chris Dodd), his best buddy (Joe Biden) and Biden&#8217;s sock puppet attorney at the DOJ (Neil MacBride) did it anyway,&#8221; Dotcom says. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107702
title: YouTube Doesn’t Have To Police Piracy Proactively, Court Rules
uri: YouTube-Doesn-t-Have-To-Police-Piracy-Proactively-Court-Rules
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/-C-MYAy9GXM/
content:
<p><img src="media/a5365da2.youtubeface.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/youtubeface.jpg" alt="youtubeface" width="222" height="158" class="alignright size-full wp-image-107705">YouTube has been battling music rights group GEMA in several court cases for more than half a decade. </p>
<p>In one of the most prominent cases the music group, which claims to represent 70,000 artists, argued that YouTube is liable for the content its users upload. As such, they want Google&#8217;s video service to proactively monitor the site for possible infringements.</p>
<p>This liability argument was denied in 2012 by a lower court, but GEMA appealed the decision. Yesterday the Appeals Court in Hamburg announced its verdict, confirming the earlier ruling. </p>
<p>According to the court, YouTube has no obligation to actively police video content users submit to the site.</p>
<p>&#8220;YouTube is in basis not required to monitor the content they transmit or store, or to investigate circumstances that indicate illegal user activity,&#8221; the court <a href="http://justiz.hamburg.de/oberlandesgericht/4542880/pressemeldung-2015-07-01-olg-01/">states</a>. </p>
<p>It&#8217;s not all good news for Google though. The court emphasized that YouTube has to do more to ensure that infringing content is barred. </p>
<p>&#8220;However, if a service provider is notified of a clear violation of the law, it must not only remove the content immediately, but also take precautions which ensure that no further infringements will be possible.&#8221;</p>
<p>YouTube previously argued that copyright holders can use its <a href="https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797370?hl=en">Content ID</a> system to ensure that infringing files remain offline. However, GEMA is hesitant to use the system, which requires rightsholders to act.  </p>
<p>GEMA is disappointed that the court didn&#8217;t confirm that YouTube is liable for its users, but sees the responsibility comments as a win. </p>
<p>&#8220;The ruling of the Court of Appeals shows that YouTube can not escape responsibility for copyright infringements, and that it can&#8217;t pass on all responsibility to the rights owner,&#8221; says GEMA CEO Harald Heker.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s unclear what extra measures YouTube should take, but German music industry law firm Rasch <a href="http://www.raschlegal.de/news/urheberrecht-muss-youtube-verantwortung-uebernehmen/">suggests</a> that keyword filtering is a viable option.</p>
<p>The Hamburg court also ruled on a separate issue confirming that YouTube didn&#8217;t remove seven videos swiftly enough. In five other instances YouTube handled the cases correctly. Both Google and GEMA appealed the lower court&#8217;s decision, but both appeals were rejected.</p>
<p>Thus far the court has only announced the decision in an oral hearing. The full verdict will be released later this month and can still be appealed by both sides.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107669
title: Anti-Piracy Lawfirm Defrauded Rightsholders Out of Millions
uri: Anti-Piracy-Lawfirm-Defrauded-Rightsholders-Out-of-Millions
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/g07_6JKUUrk/
content:
<p><img src="media/3932f7e0.moneybanned.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/moneybanned.jpg" alt="moneybanned" width="180" height="171" class="alignright size-full wp-image-86198">More than a decade ago, international and Danish entertainment industry groups banded together to tackle piracy of movies, music and other media. Their aggressive collaboration became known as Antipiratgruppen (Anti-Piracy Group).</p>
<p>Of course, all anti-piracy groups need lawyers and as a result Danish lawfirm Johan Schlüter was hired for the job. The lawfirm became deeply entrenched in tracking down pirates when it created anti-piracy tracking firm DtecNet in 2004 and in the same year it <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54423-2004Nov16_2.html">developed a tool</a> for the MPAA which aimed to identify and then delete file-sharing software from users computers.</p>
<p>In the years that followed the Johan Schlüter lawfirm became ever more involved in the anti-piracy business and continued to support Antipiratgruppen after it changed its name to RettighedsAlliancen (Rights Alliance). The company eventually <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/leading-anti-piracy-outfit-sold-to-us-fraud-and-brand-protection-firm-101214/">sold DtecNet</a> to U.S.-based brand protection company MarkMonitor in 2010 but continued in the copyright business.</p>
<p>Now, however, the lawfirm is mired in a huge controversy after an investigation uncovered financial irregularities amounting to millions of dollars in the company&#8217;s accounts.</p>
<p>What makes the case so intriguing is the allegation that the money in question should have been distributed to movie and TV industry associations and their underlying rightsholders. The groups &#8211; CAB, <a href="http://www.filmkopi.dk/">Filmkopi</a> and <a href="http://www.filmret.dk/">Filmret</a> &#8211; hired Johan Schlüter to handle the registration, collection and administration of their rights but it appears the lawfirm hasn&#8217;t been playing things fair.</p>
<p>In January the associations asked U.S. auditing giant <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deloitte">Deloitte</a> to investigate Johan Schlüter. The study found that between 2011 and 30 April 2015, at least 100,000,000 Danish Kroner ($15m) that should have been paid to the associations wasn&#8217;t handed over.</p>
<p>The associations say they are in &#8220;shock&#8221; that their twenty year collaboration with the lawfirm has ended this way.</p>
<p>&#8220;It is deeply disappointing that a longtime partner has failed to this degree. This is a violent breach of trust,&#8221; Director of the Producers&#8217; Association, Klaus Hansen, told <a href="http://finans.dk/">Finans.dk</a>.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, finger-pointing is already underway.</p>
<p>The Johan Schlüter lawfirm has three owners &#8211; Johan Schlüter himself, Lars Halgreen and Susanne Fryland. According to a police report cited by Finans, Susanne Fryland was responsible for the management of the TV and film producer accounts and now stands accused of committing &#8220;very serious economic crimes for financial gain.&#8221;</p>
<p>According to Halgreen, Fryland was fired by the lawfirm on Tuesday and has been reported for embezzlement, fraud and breach of trust. Nevertheless, Halgreen still attempted to cast doubt on the auditors&#8217; $15m claim, noting that &#8220;it is far from certain that the amount is so high.&#8221;</p>
<p>Certainly, the three owners will be hoping the amount is lower.</p>
<p>While the associations acknowledge that there aren&#8217;t significant assets in the Johan Schlüter lawfirm business, they don&#8217;t intend to let the matter lie. Reports suggest that the movie and TV associations will try to hold Schlüter, Halgreen and Fryland personally liable for their losses.</p>
<p>&#8220;The most important thing for me has been to ensure a continuous operation, so the money comes out to the rights holders,&#8221; Hansen concludes.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107573
title: Tech Giants Oppose Broad Anti-Piracy Injunctions
uri: Tech-Giants-Oppose-Broad-Anti-Piracy-Injunctions
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/0z8EdzzCc1I/
content:
<p><img src="media/41b54e5e.msfacebook.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/msfacebook.png" alt="msfacebook" width="200" height="171" class="alignright size-full wp-image-74423">In recent months there have been <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-domain-seizures-are-easy-in-the-united-states-150521/">several lawsuits</a> in the U.S. in which copyright holders were granted broad injunctions, allowing them to seize domain names of alleged pirate sites. </p>
<p>In addition, these injunctions were sometimes directed at hosting providers, search engines and ISPs, preventing these companies from doing business with these sites.</p>
<p>Most recently, such a request came from the publishing company Elsevier, who <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/elsevier-cracks-down-on-pirated-scientific-articles-150609/">sued the websites Libgen.org and Sci-Hub.org</a>. The publisher asked for a preliminary injunction targeting several third-party services.</p>
<p>While the operators of the &#8220;pirate&#8221; sites have yet to respond, several tech companies have joined in to protest the request. This week the Computer &#038; Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which includes <a href="http://www.ccianet.org/about/members/">members</a> such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft, asked the court to limit the proposed injunction.</p>
<p>In its current form the proposal targets any search engine, ISP and hosting company, without naming any in particular, which isn&#8217;t allowed according to the tech companies. </p>
<p>&#8220;What Plaintiffs here are seeking is, in essence, an injunction against the world. It is well established that such a sweeping injunction against nonparty intermediaries is impermissible,&#8221; CCIA writes (<a href="media/90d81902.cciopp.pdf" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/cciopp.pdf">pdf</a>).</p>
<p>According to the tech companies, neutral service providers are not “in active concert or participation” with the defendant, and should therefore be excluded from the proposed text. </p>
<p>The CCIA gives the example of search engines, which may link to pirate websites but can&#8217;t be seen as “aiders and abettors,” or as collaborating with these sites to violate the law.</p>
<p>Even if one of the third party services could be found liable, the matter should be resolved under the DMCA and not through an injunction, the CCIA claims. </p>
<p>&#8220;The DMCA thus puts bedrock limits on the injunctions that can be imposed on qualifying providers if they are named as defendants and are held liable as infringers. Plaintiffs here ignore that.&#8221; </p>
<p>&#8220;What they seek, in the posture of a preliminary injunction against nonparties, goes beyond what Congress was willing to permit, even against service providers who come before a court as defendants against whom an actual judgment of infringement has been entered. That request must be rejected.&#8221; </p>
<p>The New York federal court has scheduled a hearing later this month after which it will decide whether to issue the preliminary injunction or not. Thus far, Elsevier hasn&#8217;t responded to CCIA&#8217;s opposition.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107698
title: Popcorn Time Blamed For Movie Streaming Piracy Explosion
uri: Popcorn-Time-Blamed-For-Movie-Streaming-Piracy-Explosion
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/0-ztjzbcw8E/
content:
<p><img src="media/fe8b9112.norkse.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/norkse.jpg" width="190" height="190" class="alignright">Up until last year, downloading content using BitTorrent was an activity that needed a reasonable level of technical competence. In addition to choosing the correct software and setting everything up, users needed to make themselves familiar with any number torrent indexes and platforms.</p>
<p>Then along came Popcorn Time and simplified the process to the point that almost anyone can now download the software and access a wide range of (mostly) infringing content within minutes. Needless to say, the various forks of the software have been a thorn in the side of the movie and TV show industry ever since.</p>
<p>With complaints being made against the software in most western countries, it&#8217;s now Norway&#8217;s turn to make some noise. While the country has expressed concerns about the software in the past, a report published in June by consultancy firm <a href="http://www.mediavision.se/">Mediavision</a> is adding fuel to the fire.</p>
<p>According to the company, which analyzes consumer behavior within the sphere of digital media, around 750,000 Norwegians from a five million population are now obtaining video from illegal sources, up 17% on the previous year. However, it is the manner in which they are doing it that&#8217;s causing additional concern. According to the researchers, illegal consumption of streaming content has doubled in the past year. And no prizes for guessing who anti-piracy groups are blaming.</p>
<p>&#8220;The reason for the increase in piracy is Popcorn Time,&#8221; <a href="http://www.nrk.no/kultur/750.000-nordmenn-villig-til-a-stromme-ulovlig-1.12431771">says</a> Rights Alliance Norway chief Willy Johansen.</p>
<p>&#8220;It is unfortunately an incredibly easy way to watch movies. But one should be aware that this is a criminal offense. We are now collecting the IP addresses of Norwegian users of Popcorn Time.&#8221;</p>
<p>While users will be disappointed to hear that they are being tracked by a Hollywood-backed anti-piracy outfit, the big question is what Rights Alliance will choose to do with that data. The group says their hand may be forced.</p>
<p>&#8220;We have hoped for the longest time that we do not have to take on the end-user. But it is clear that if this does not stop, we will have no choice. Most people are now aware that they are doing something illegal, but many continue because &#8216;everyone else is doing it&#8217;,&#8221; Johansen says.</p>
<p>Also on the horizon are lawsuits against local ISPs. Rights Alliance hopes that by obtaining a blocking injunction against Popcorn Time-affiliated sites and services, the problem might be brought under control. However, things aren&#8217;t straightforward.</p>
<p>&#8220;It takes time in the Norwegian legal system, so there is a protracted process,&#8221; Johansen <a href="http://www.dn.no/etterBors/2015/06/24/2142/Strmming/ulovlig-strmming-doblet">notes</a>.</p>
<p>&#8220;There is nothing that can be sent to the court today. But we&#8217;re working on it together with our attorneys to look into the possibility of getting this stopped through a lawsuit against broadband providers.&#8221;</p>
<p>After changes in the law two years ago, these kinds of injunctions were supposed to be easy for groups like Rights Alliance to obtain, but it appears there are still significant hurdles to overcome. Not only are there very stringent requirements in order to obtain an injunction, all expenses incurred must be paid by the plaintiff.</p>
<p>&#8220;No independent licensees in Norway have the opportunity [to get injunctions], because they do not have the finances to do so. If we are to stop something, it must be an overall industry behind the lawsuit. It requires a very detailed presentation of evidence, <a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/fakta/innsikt/Gratisfilm-pa-Popcorn-Time-er-ulovlig-likevel-8067578.html">says</a> Johansen.</p>
<p>Interestingly, however, the group has been working on getting an injunction against another site, most probably The Pirate Bay. The results should become evident in a few weeks.</p>
<p>&#8220;The case we&#8217;re working on already started before Popcorn Time existed. The problem is that evidence is so extensive that the whole Popcorn Time phenomenon arose during the time we spent gathering evidence from the previous service,&#8221; the Rights Alliance chief adds.</p>
<p>As usual, however, the industry isn&#8217;t getting much help from ISPs including Telenor, Norway&#8217;s largest provider.</p>
<p>&#8220;We wish to contribute by relating to parliamentary procedure adopted in such cases,&#8221; says Telenor director Tormod Sandstø.</p>
<p>&#8220;So the court must make decisions in individual cases, also we will of course abide by those decisions. As an Internet provider we will not be a censorship body.&#8221;</p>
<p>The news that Norway may target end users is disappointing. The country has <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/unprecedented-music-piracy-collapse-fails-to-boost-revenues-150126/">all but eliminated</a> music piracy yet still prefers <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/after-eliminating-music-piracy-norway-hits-first-movie-site-150328/">anti-piracy aggression</a> over business model changes in the video sector.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107683
title: FBI Wants Pirate Bay Logs to Expose Copyright Trolls
uri: FBI-Wants-Pirate-Bay-Logs-to-Expose-Copyright-Trolls
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/18_d269LgZQ/
content:
<p><img src="media/2a43984f.pirate-bay.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/pirate-bay.jpg" alt="pirate bay" width="200" height="207" class="alignright size-full wp-image-53470">Over the past few years copyright troll law firm <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law">Prenda</a> crossed the line on several occasions. </p>
<p>Most controversial was the clear evidence that Prenda uploaded their own torrents to The Pirate Bay, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/copyright-troll-ran-pirate-bay-honeypot-comcast-confirms-130815/">creating a honeypot</a> for the people they later sued over pirated downloads.</p>
<p>The crucial evidence to back up this allegation came from The Pirate Bay, who shared upload logs with TorrentFreak that tied a user account and uploads to Prenda and its boss John Steele.</p>
<p>This serious allegation together with other violations piqued the interest of the FBI. For a long time there have been suspicions that the authorities are investigating the Prenda operation and today we can confirm that this is indeed the case. </p>
<p>The confirmation comes from Pirate Bay co-founders Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij, who independently informed TF that they were questioned about Prenda during their stays in prison. </p>
<p>&#8220;I was told that Prenda Law has been under investigation for over a year, and from the printouts they showed me, I believe that,&#8221; Sunde tells TF. </p>
<p>Sunde was visited by Swedish police officers who identified themselves, noting that they were sent on behalf of the FBI. The officers mainly asked questions about Pirate Bay backups and logs.</p>
<p>&#8220;They asked many questions about the TPB backups and logs. I told them that even if they have one of the backups that it would be nearly impossible to decrypt,&#8221; Sunde says, adding that he couldn&#8217;t help them as he&#8217;s no longer associated with the site.</p>
<p>A short while after Sunde was questioned in prison the same happened to Neij. Again, the officers said they were gathering information about Pirate Bay&#8217;s logs on behalf of the FBI.</p>
<p>&#8220;They wanted to know if I could verify the accuracy of the IP-address logs, how they were stored, and how they could be retrieved,&#8221; Neij says. </p>
<p>The FBI&#8217;s interest in the logs was directly linked to <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/copyright-troll-ran-pirate-bay-honeypot-comcast-confirms-130815/">the article</a> we wrote on the Prenda honeypot in 2013. While it confirms that the feds are looking into Prenda, the FBI has not announced anything in public yet. </p>
<p>Both co-founders couldn&#8217;t help the FBI as they are no longer running the site, but perhaps they had more luck elsewhere. TF contacted the Swedish police a while ago asking for further details, but received no response.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s worth noting that the police officers also asked questions about the current state of The Pirate Bay and who&#8217;s running the site. With the recent raid in mind, it&#8217;s not unthinkable they may also have had an alternative motive.</p>
<p>In any case, today&#8217;s revelations show that Prenda is in serious trouble. The same copyright trolls who abused The Pirate Bay to trap pirates, may also face their demise thanks to the very same site. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107747
title: Police Let Seized ‘Pirate’ Domains Expire, Some Up For Sale
uri: Police-Let-Seized-Pirate-Domains-Expire-Some-Up-For-Sale
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/Uc_f51v8pYA/
content:
<p><img src="media/31176dbb.cityoflondonpolice.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/cityoflondonpolice.jpg" alt="cityoflondonpolice" width="200" height="82" class="alignright size-full wp-image-71397">For the past several years the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) has been at the forefront of Internet-focused anti-piracy activity in the UK. The government-funded unit has been responsible for several high-profile operations and has been praised by a broad range of entertainment industry companies.</p>
<p>After carrying out raids against the operators of dozens of sites, PIPCU likes to take control of their domains. They do this for two key reasons &#8211; one, so that the sites can no longer operate as they did before and two, so they can be used to &#8216;educate&#8217; former users of the downed sites.</p>
<p>That &#8216;education&#8217; takes place when visitors to the now-seized &#8216;pirate&#8217; domains are confronted not with a torrent, proxy, streaming or links site, but a banner published by PIPCU themselves. It&#8217;s aim is to send a message that sites offering copyrighted content will be dealt with under the law and to suggest that their visitors have been noted.</p>
<p>Earlier comments by PIPCU suggest that its banner has been seen millions of times by people who tried to access a &#8216;pirate&#8217; site but subsequently discovered that it no longer exists. Last month in an announcement on Twitter, the unit revealed that since Jul 2015 it has diverted more than 11m &#8216;pirate&#8217; site visits.</p>
<p><center><br>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en-gb">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DidYouKnow?src=hash">#DidYouKnow</a> since July last year we&#39;ve diverted over 11m views from pirate sites to our <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PIPCU?src=hash">#PIPCU</a> warning page? <a href="http://t.co/mhpojq9AP1">pic.twitter.com/mhpojq9AP1</a></p>
<p>&mdash; City Police PIPCU (@CityPolicePIPCU) <a href="https://twitter.com/CityPolicePIPCU/status/610464381957218304">June 15, 2015</a></p></blockquote>
<p></center><br>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></p>
<p>While the hits continue to mount for many domains PIPCU has seized (or gained control over by forcing site operators or <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/uk-police-orders-registrars-to-suspend-domains-of-major-torrent-sites-131009/">registrars into compliance</a>), it&#8217;s now likely that the group&#8217;s educational efforts will reach a smaller audience. Tests carried out by TorrentFreak reveal that PIPCU has somehow lost influence over several previously controlled domains.</p>
<p>Instead of the now-familiar PIPCU &#8216;busted&#8217; banner, visitors to a range of defunct sites are now greeted with expired, advert-laden or &#8216;for sale&#8217; domains.</p>
<p>MP3lemon.org, for example, currently displays ads/affiliate links. The same goes for Boxingguru.tv, a domain that was linked to a <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/police-arrest-streaming-site-admin-several-domains-suspended-140409/">high-profile PIPCU raid in 2014</a>. Former proxies Katunblock.com and Fenopyreverse.info, plus former streaming links site Potlocker.re complete the batch.</p>
<p><center><img src="media/e0086ac3.boxing-guru.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/boxing-guru.png" alt="boxing-guru" width="600" height="463" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-107751"></center></p>
<p>Other domains don&#8217;t carry ads but are instead listed for sale. They<cite> </cite><cite class="_Rm"></cite>include former anti-censorship tool site <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/unblock-torrent-sites-blocked-proxies-camerons-porn-filter-with-immunicity-130728/">Torrenticity.com</a>, proxy index PirateReverse.info and H33T proxy h33tunblock.info.</p>
<p>The fate of the final set of domains is much less glamorous. Movie2KProxy.com, Movie4KProxy.com, EZTVProxy.net, Metricity.org, YIFYProxy.net and TorrentProxies.com all appear to have simply expired.<cite class="_Rm"></cite></p>
<p>Whether these domains will be snapped up at the first opportunity or left to die will largely hinge on whether people believe they can make a profit from them. Some have already changed hands and are now being touted for a couple of thousand dollars each but others are lying in limbo.</p>
<p>In any event, none of these domains seem destined to display PIPCU&#8217;s banner in the future. Whether or not the unit cares right now is up for debate, but if any of the domains spring back into life with a &#8216;pirate&#8217; mission, that could soon change.</p>
<p>Unlike Megaupload&#8217;s old domains they don&#8217;t appear <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/seized-megaupload-domains-link-to-scam-ads-and-malware-150528/">linked to obvious scams</a>, so that&#8217;s probably the main thing.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107737
title: Major Streaming Sites Must Be Blocked, Court Rules
uri: Major-Streaming-Sites-Must-Be-Blocked-Court-Rules
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/9RmzgVf1FXg/
content:
<p><img src="media/c579e316.pirate-card.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/pirate-card.jpg" width="250" height="210" class="alignright">In 2014 the European Court of Justice handed down a <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/eu-court-isps-can-be-forced-to-block-pirate-sites-140327/">widely publicized decision</a> which made clear that, in reasonable circumstances, pirate sites can be blocked by European ISPs.</p>
<p>On the back of this ruling, Austrian anti-piracy outfit VAP wrote to several local ISPs (UPC, 3, Tele2 and A1) demanding blockades of streaming sites Movie4K.to and Kinox.to. This would become the local test case on which all future site blockades would be built.</p>
<p>After the ISPs rejected their request, in August 2014 VAP <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/four-isps-sued-for-failing-to-block-pirate-movie-sites-140830/">sued the providers</a>. In October VAP <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/court-orders-immediate-pirate-site-blockade-141003/">emerged victorious</a> and the ISPs were ordered to implement a blockade.</p>
<p>While ISP UPC accepted the decision, Tele2, A1 and 3 filed a further appeal and the case went to the Supreme Court. Now the court has handed down its decision and it&#8217;s yet another defeat for the ISPs.</p>
<p>Affirming the earlier ruling, the Supreme Court <a href="http://futurezone.at/netzpolitik/ogh-netzsperren-sind-zulaessig-user-sollen-dafuer-zahlen/139.308.830">ruled</a> that blocking websites in Austria is entirely legal. Furthermore, the court also confirmed that the Internet Service Providers will have to bear the costs of blocking the sites, informing them that their business model should allow them to be &#8220;financially and technically equipped&#8221; to implement blockades.</p>
<p>VAP President Winfred Kunze welcomed the decision.</p>
<p>&#8220;Illegal portals do not contribute to film financing and do harm to creators. Legal services strengthen both the creative industry and the telecommunications industry, which indeed benefit from the attractiveness of a legal offer,&#8221; Kunze said.</p>
<p>According to Futurezone, the Association of Austrian Internet Providers (ISPA), is less enthusiastic about the outcome, in particular concerning costs and the &#8220;slippery slope&#8221; potential of web-blocking.</p>
<p>&#8220;Today Internet locks, tomorrow &#8230;,&#8221; the group concludes.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="https://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107686
title: Court Drops Innocent Cox Subscribers From Piracy Lawsuit
uri: Court-Drops-Innocent-Cox-Subscribers-From-Piracy-Lawsuit
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/225DefbFY44/
content:
<p><img src="media/f2bfe741.pirate-running.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/pirate-running.jpg" alt="pirate-running" width="222" height="204" class="alignright size-full wp-image-78717">Last year BMG Rights Management and Round Hill Music <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/cox-communications-sued-for-not-disconnecting-pirates-141128/">sued Cox Communications</a>, arguing that the ISP fails to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.</p>
<p>As part of the discovery process the music outfits requested details on the accounts which they caught downloading their content. </p>
<p>In total there are 150,000 alleged pirates, but the court limited the initial disclosure to the top 250 infringing IP-addresses in the six months before the lawsuit was filed.</p>
<p>A few weeks ago Cox started informing its customers that their information would be handed over to the music companies. In a response, dozens of subscribers asked the court not to expose their identities. </p>
<p>Some argued that they should be dismissed because they have did not share the mentioned files. Another group explained to the court that they were <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/innocent-cox-subscribers-dragged-into-piracy-lawsuit-150615/">wrongfully included</a>, because they weren&#8217;t Cox subscribers at the time of the alleged offense. </p>
<p>The latter issue is due to Cox&#8217;s broad reading of an earlier court order. Instead of handing over details of subscribers who used the IP-addresses at the time of the infringements, the ISP also included the current IP-address holders.</p>
<p><center><strong>Objection from a Cox subscriber</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/39f0bf8d.objectcox.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/objectcox.jpg" alt="objectcox" width="600" height="389" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-106935"></center></p>
<p>This week U.S. Magistrate Judge John Anderson ruled on the objections (<a href="media/fece65ba.coxorder.pdf" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/coxorder.pdf">pdf</a>), concluding that the subscribers who did not use the IP-address at the time should be dropped.</p>
<p>&#8220;Several of the persons submitting objections have provided information to the court that is sufficient to establish that they were not assigned the IP addresses that are the subject of the court’s ruling at the time of the alleged infringing activity.</p>
<p>&#8220;The court sustains the objections raised by those individuals,&#8221; the order adds.</p>
<p>The other group of subscribers who merely claimed that they did not share any of the copyright infringing files, were less successful. Their requests were denied and Cox will share their personal details with the music companies.</p>
<p>&#8220;The mere denial of any infringing activity is an insufficient reason to justify quashing the subpoena to Cox. In addition, any concerns these individuals may have relating to privacy are addressed adequately by the provisions of the Protective Order entered in this action,&#8221; the order reads.</p>
<p>The last part is important because many subscribers fear that the music companies will come after their money. However, the court assures them that their personal information can only be used as evidence in this lawsuit, not to demand settlements. </p>
<p>&#8220;The subscriber information produced in this action is to be used solely for the purposes of litigating the claims raised in this action between BMG/Round Hill and Cox and will not be used by BMG/Round Hill to solicit payments directly from Cox subscribers.&#8221;</p>
<p>For the music companies this shouldn&#8217;t be a problem. They previously said that they don&#8217;t intend to pursue any individual subscribers in the lawsuit. How they do plan to use the personal details of the subscribers will become clear as the case proceeds.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="https://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=107581
title: Private Copying and UK Copyright Law – Not Dead Yet
uri: Private-Copying-and-UK-Copyright-Law-Not-Dead-Yet
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/aABGfJQZ8MQ/
content:
<p><img src="media/4230235c.cd-dvd-feat-150x150.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/cd-dvd-feat-150x150.jpg" alt="cd-dvd-feat" width="96" height="96" class="alignright size-thumbnail wp-image-86002">The recent <a href="media/772d22fc.basca-v-sofs-bis-judgment.pdf" data-original-source="https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/basca-v-sofs-bis-judgment.pdf">BASCA case</a> has raised some interesting questions about the legal status of the private copying exception to UK copyright law <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/uk-government-legalizes-cd-ripping-cloud-backups-today-141001/">introduced in 2014</a>.</p>
<p>Broadly speaking, the new law is found in s28B of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988, and introduced a limited defense to a copyright infringement claim where an individual makes a copy of a work he legitimately already owns, for example for the purpose of format shifting. Ripping a music file from a CD to .MP3 format for playing on a smartphone or tablet being one typical example.</p>
<p>This exception does not allow copying of copyright protected material for family and friends, neither does it legitimize downloading files from the Internet, as in most cases the downloader will not already own a legitimate licensed copy.</p>
<p>So really, you might well think, “that is a pretty limited situation, why all the fuss?”</p>
<p>Why indeed.</p>
<p>The issue turns around the meaning of “fair compensation”. BASCA and the other claimants claim they are due some fair compensation for this as required by <a href="http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2001:167:0010:0019:EN:PDF">EU Directive 2001/29</a> which UK law has to comply with. The UK Government contended, in this particular instance, that no compensation is fair compensation.</p>
<p>The agenda for the claimant is that if they succeed, a blank media levy on storage would likely be introduced to provide their fair compensation, which already exists in many other European Countries. This will of course increase costs for consumers, and profits for copyright owners.</p>
<p>It is therefore a quite high stakes game, and means that immediate settlement in this case (the government <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/uks-legalization-of-cd-ripping-is-unlawful-court-rules-150619/">lost a judicial review</a> earlier this month) is probably quite unlikely. The key issues are whether the UK’s new private copying exception was itself legal under EU law and secondly, whether the process it was adopted under was procedurally legal.</p>
<p>The case can hardly be touted as a victory for the Claimants – BASCA et al. Of several grounds put forward by the claimants regarding the compliance with EU law, the judge rejected each in turn, not one being upheld. The only ground of the claimant’s case which was upheld, was that the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, in introducing section 28B had not taken all relevant evidence and information into account before introducing this section.</p>
<p>So what happens now?</p>
<p>For the time being at least s28B remains with its limited format shifting defense. We are, for the moment, still free to format shift.</p>
<p>The Secretary of State could merely carry out the review in the proper manner identified by the court, gather sufficient evidence supporting s28B and that would satisfy the procedural requirement.</p>
<p>Either party could also appeal, the Claimant against the judge’s ruling against them on several points of law, or the defendant against the judge’s finding against the Secretary of State that insufficient evidence had been gathered or taken into account.</p>
<p>If this were to occur, it would be to the Court of Appeal, and possibly from there to the Supreme Court. For such appeals timescales of years rather than months are usually appropriate.</p>
<p>The other option which exists, which is not an appeal as such, is the court could refer the matter to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for a ruling on a point of Law. As the UK law in dispute is derived from EU Law, it is the CJEU who has the ultimate say on what the EU law means in those circumstances.</p>
<p>Here the UK court would ask a specific set of questions as to what the correct interpretation of the law is, but the CJEU does not strictly speaking decide for the claimant or defendant, though in effect the ruling will usually strongly be favorable to one of the parties. This process will often take at least three or more years.</p>
<p>What might appeal courts or the CJEU rule ? Impossible to say with any certainty, but the CJEU has said in the recent <a href="http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&amp;docid=162691&amp;pageIndex=0&amp;doclang=EN&amp;mode=req&amp;dir=&amp;occ=first&amp;part=1&amp;cid=530739">Copydan</a> case that in circumstances where there is minimal prejudice to the copyright owner, no compensation can indeed be fair compensation.</p>
<p>In this instance, as the user has already paid a copyright license fee when buying the original CD from which files are ripped, do the copyright owners suffer anything more than minor prejudice? I would suggest not, and it is apparent that this is the opinion of the judge Mr Justice Green, in BASCA. The claimants in BASCA of course contend differently, but well they would wouldn’t they?</p>
<p>A final parting point. If it were the case that through a CJEU ruling against format shifting a blank media levy was introduced (and this can be compelled by the EU, although this would be a long several year process of CJEU Ruling, UK failure to comply, negotiations, warnings etc before any action was taken by the Commission)  the UK Government could quite legitimately contend that since many other EU countries which allow private copying with such levies also allow private copies for family members, the UK should now do the same.</p>
<p>This would widen the ambit of the current s28B a significant amount, and would to some extent offset increased costs to consumers of a blank media levy.</p>
<p>&#8212;</p>
<p><strong>About the author: </strong><em>Camden is an IP lawyer practicing in the UK</em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="https://torrentfreak.com">TorrentFreak</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-popular-torrent-sites-2015-150104/">torrent sites</a> and the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/">best VPN services</a>.</p>
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