# articles

feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135641
title: Dozens of Pirate Sites Targeted in New Aussie Crackdown
uri: Dozens-of-Pirate-Sites-Targeted-in-New-Aussie-Crackdown
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/ruPh282uicU/
content:
<p><a href="media/0702e6e5.blocked-censor.jpg" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/blocked-censor.jpg"><img src="media/2759597c.blocked-censor.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/blocked-censor.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="170" class="alignright size-full wp-image-124850"></a>Following a case brought by Roadshow Films, Foxtel, Disney, Paramount, Columbia, and 20th Century Fox, last December more than fifty Internet service providers Down Under were ordered to start barring subscriber access to ‘pirate’ sites.</p>
<p>At the Federal Court, Justice John Nicholas <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-and-other-pirate-sites-will-be-blocked-in-australia-161215/">ruled</a> that The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, TorrentHound, IsoHunt and streaming service SolarMovie would all have to be rendered inaccessible to consumers in Australia. Included in the order were dozens of proxy and mirror sites.</p>
<p>After working so hard to have site-blocking legislation passed, it was only a matter of time before rightsholders returned to have more sites blocked. It was therefore no surprise to hear that a new process was launched earlier today.</p>
<p>Backed by six movie studios, Village Roadshow is again in the driving seat, this time seeking to block dozens of &#8216;pirate&#8217; sites. ComputerWorld <a href="http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/614804/piracy-crackdown-village-roadshow-launches-legal-action-to-block-41-websites/">reports</a> that there are 41 sites targeted although a couple of domains in the list relate to the same core site.</p>
<p>Many popular torrent sites are in the spotlight including ExtraTorrent, RarBG, Demonoid, LimeTorrents, Torrent Downloads, TorrentProject, YTS and EZTV.</p>
<p>Streaming portals 123Movies, CouchTuner, Icefilms, Movie4K, PrimeWire, Viooz, Putlocker, WatchFree and WatchSeries are also listed alongside direct download sites RlsBB and TehParadox. The complaint also targets several proxy and mirror sites.</p>
<p>In its application, Roadshow requests that ISPs Telstra, Optus, Vocus, TPG, (and their subsidiaries) block the sites using the template established in the earlier Pirate Bay case. If the movie company wants additional proxy and mirror sites blocked in future, it will need to file an affidavit with the court.</p>
<p>The full list of sites, courtesy of Computerworld, reads as follows:</p>
<p>• 123Movies<br>
• Alluc<br>
• Bitsnoop<br>
• Couchtuner<br>
• Demonoid<br>
• Extra.to<br>
• ExtraTorrent.cc<br>
• EYNY<br>
• EZTV<br>
• FMovies<br>
• GenVideos<br>
• Hdmovieswatch<br>
• Icefilms<br>
• Kinogo<br>
• KissCartoon<br>
• Limetorrents<br>
• MegaShare<br>
• Movie4k<br>
• Phimmoi<br>
• Piratebay.to<br>
• PrimeWire<br>
• Putlocker.ch<br>
• Putlocker.plus<br>
• Putlocker.run<br>
• Putlockers.vip<br>
• Rarbg<br>
• RIsbb<br>
• Shush<br>
• Softarchive<br>
• Spacemov<br>
• Tehparadox<br>
• Torrent Downloads<br>
• TorrentProject<br>
• Viooz<br>
• WatchFree<br>
• WatchSeries<br>
• Xemphimso<br>
• Xmovies8.org<br>
• XMovies8.tv<br>
• Yify Torrent<br>
• YTS</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135603
title: Movie Company Issues Warning Over Fake “Piracy” Fines
uri: Movie-Company-Issues-Warning-Over-Fake-Piracy-Fines
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/HYiSoLZjaEs/
content:
<p><img src="media/5f33ed04.scam1.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/scam1.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="152" class="alignright size-full wp-image-76894">For more than a decade copyright holders have been monitoring unauthorized downloads. </p>
<p>Traditionally this have resulted in harmless takedown notices but increasingly, these warnings are being turned into settlement demands or automated fines.</p>
<p>Rightsholders in the Netherlands are <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/brein-threatens-pirates-with-high-fines-warns-vpn-users-160314/">planning similar action</a>, and this week it appeared that the first mass-campaign had gone live. Yesterday, several people received a letter in the mail which accused them of illegal downloading. </p>
<p>The letters in question were sent in the name of local distributer Dutch Filmworks and each quotes a standard fine of 150 euros per download. Adding in a classic conversion trick, those who pay within eights days only have to cough up €52.74.</p>
<p>The letters look pretty legitimate, especially to people who are unfamiliar with these type of demands. However, the fact that several crucial details are missing, including an IP-address and the name of the pirated movie, should set off alarm bells. </p>
<p>And indeed, after several people reported the apparent scam, Dutch Filmworks confirmed that they have nothing to do with these fines. To avoid any confusion, the movie distributer quickly placed a prominent warning on its website, advising recipients to trash the letters.</p>
<p>&#8220;There is a fake letter in circulation. This letter is NOT sent by Dutch Filmworks. Do not pay and throw the letter away,&#8221; the movie distributer <a href="http://www.dfw.nl/">warns</a>.</p>
<p>While the letters look real enough to fool some people, the first mass warnings (with or without fines) have yet to be sent in the Netherlands. </p>
<p>When the process happens for real, things might not go as smoothly as copyright holders would like as several Internet providers are refusing to cooperate. Last month, leading Dutch Internet provider Ziggo said it had <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/isp-says-it-wont-send-breins-anti-piracy-warnings-170118/">refused</a> to voluntarily participate in the plan of local anti-piracy group BREIN, who want to send out mass warnings to pirates. </p>
<p>&#8220;As an ISP we are a neutral access provider. This does not include the role of active enforcement of rights or interests of third parties, including BREIN,” a company spokesperson said.</p>
<p>Also, if rightsholders want to obtain the personal details of alleged downloaders they will have to go to court first, which hasn&#8217;t happened thus far. Until then, it is safe to throw all unsubstantiated piracy letters in the trash.</p>
<p>Fake piracy fines are by no means a new phenomenon. Last year many U.S. Internet subscribers were targeted in a <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-phishing-scam-targets-u-s-isps-subscribers-160624/">similar scam</a>. In this case, the scammers used the name of a known piracy tracking outfit and rightsholders such as Lionsgate, to send fake DMCA notices and settlement demands to ISPs. </p>
<p>&#8212;-</p>
<p><em>A copy of the fake letter, pictured below, was posted by <a href="https://tweakers.net/nieuws/121623/dutch-filmworks-waarschuwt-voor-nepbrief-over-boete-voor-illegaal-downloaden.html">Tweakers</a>. </em></p>
<p><a href="media/9a2de954.fakeletter.jpg" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/fakeletter.jpg"><img src="media/183ee72f.fakeletter.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/fakeletter.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="877" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-135613"></a></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135557
title: Anti-Piracy Measures Shouldn’t Stifle Free Speech, EFF Says
uri: Anti-Piracy-Measures-Shouldn-t-Stifle-Free-Speech-EFF-Says
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/E7rsqQ2qQAI/
content:
<p><img src="media/bd0abf4c.copyright-blood.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/copyright-blood.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="151" class="alignright size-full wp-image-120567">Still <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-copyright-office-undecided-about-future-of-dmca-takedowns-161114/">undecided</a> about the future of the DMCA law, the U.S. Government’s Copyright Office extended its public consultation to evaluate the effectiveness of the Safe Harbor provisions.</p>
<p>The study aims to signal problems with the current takedown procedures and addresses ISPs&#8217; repeat infringer policies, copyright takedown abuses, and the ever-increasing volume of DMCA notices.</p>
<p>Together with various rightsholders and Internet services, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (<a href="https://www.eff.org/">EFF</a>) also submitted its recommendations this week. The digital rights group believes that the current law works as it should, and warns against a copyright enforcement expansion.</p>
<p>The Internet provides a crucial role in facilitating freedom of expression, something that shouldn&#8217;t be limited by far-reaching anti-piracy measures, the organization argues. </p>
<p>&#8220;Internet intermediaries provide the backbone for Internet users’ expression and are key to the public’s ability to exercise these rights,&#8221; EFF writes in its submission.</p>
<p>&#8220;Accordingly, the public has a strong interest in ensuring that the Internet remains a viable and accessible platform for free expression and innovation, and in ensuring that online platforms don’t unduly remove, filter, or block speech from the Internet.&#8221;</p>
<p>One of the areas of interest for the Copyright Office is how to deal with repeat infringers. The DMCA law requires Internet providers to have a repeat infringer policy in place, but stakeholders have different views on what these should look like. </p>
<p>According to the EFF, however, terminating people&#8217;s Internet access is much more than a slap on the wrist, as it can severely impede people&#8217;s ability to function in today&#8217;s society.</p>
<p>&#8220;Conduit ISPs serve as the bridge between their subscribers and the entire Internet. Terminating a subscriber’s Internet access account imposes a far more significant penalty that merely cutting off access to a single Internet service.&#8221; </p>
<p>Nowadays, terminating an Internet account often means that the entire household will be affected. The EFF warns that as a result, many people will lose access to important information and tools, which are needed for school, jobs, and even government services.</p>
<p>&#8220;Indeed, as former President Obama stated, Internet access today is &#8216;not a luxury, it’s a necessity&#8217;,&#8221; the EFF adds.</p>
<p>Another question posted by the Copyright Office deals with the necessity for anti-piracy filters. Yesterday, the <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/music-industry-wants-piracy-filters-no-takedown-whack-a-mole-170222/">RIAA and other music groups</a> spoke out in favor of automated filters but the EFF fiercely opposes the idea.</p>
<p>One of the problems the group signals is that filtering will require Internet services to monitor their users&#8217; activity, causing privacy concerns. In addition these filters will also be imprecise, targeting content that&#8217;s considered fair use, for example. </p>
<p>Finally, automated filters will require Internet services to police the Internet, which can be quite costly and stifle free speech at the same time.</p>
<p>&#8220;&#8230;by shifting the burden and cost of enforcement away from copyright holders and onto service providers, these proposals would stifle competition for Internet services, exacerbate current problems with the notice and takedown system, and increase the risk that valuable, lawful speech will be silenced,&#8221; the EFF writes.</p>
<p>The same free speech argument also applies to site-blocking initiatives. According to the EFF, such blocking efforts also restrict access to legitimate material. At the same time, the measures are far from effective. </p>
<p>&#8220;Site-blocking often has broader impacts on lawful online speech than intended. When entire domains are blocked, every other page hosted by those domains are subject to the block, regardless of whether they contain infringing content.</p>
<p>&#8220;Site-blocking is also largely ineffective at stemming online copyright infringement. Many sites are able to relaunch at new URLs, and users are often able to circumvent blocks using VPNs and the Tor browser,&#8221; the group adds.</p>
<p>In summary, the EFF concludes that overall the current law <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/eff-copyright-office-safe-harbors-work">works pretty well</a> and the group warns the Copyright Office not to give in to the broad &#8220;filter-everything&#8221; push from major copyright industry groups.</p>
<p>&#8212;</p>
<p><em>The EFF&#8217;s full submission to the U.S. Copyright office is available <a href="media/86caedd8.2015-7_additional_comments_of_eff_512_study.pdf" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/2015-7_additional_comments_of_eff_512_study.pdf">here (pdf)</a>.</em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135571
title: Swedish Internet Users Face New Wave of Piracy Cash Demands
uri: Swedish-Internet-Users-Face-New-Wave-of-Piracy-Cash-Demands
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/1LPbDgalUok/
content:
<p><a href="media/67ffec03.trollsign.jpg" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/trollsign.jpg"><img src="media/17a592c8.trollsign.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/trollsign.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="167" class="alignright size-full wp-image-108977"></a>Last year, mass ‘copyright-trolling’ hit Sweden for the <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/attention-swedish-pirate-bay-users-copyright-trolls-have-arrived-160902/">first time</a>. An organization calling itself Spridningskollen (Distribution Check) claimed its new initiative would save the entertainment industries and educate the masses.</p>
<p>Predictably there was a huge backlash, both among the public and in the media, something which eventually led the group to <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-trolls-abandon-sweden-in-blaze-of-bad-publicity-161101/">discontinue its operations</a> in the country. Now, however, a new wave of trolling is about to hit the country.</p>
<p>Swedish publication <a href="http://www.breakit.se/artikel/6600/ny-rad-mot-svenska-fildelare-tusentals-pirater-riskerar-kravbrev">Breakit.se</a> reports that a major new offensive is about to begin, with a Danish law firm Njord and movie company <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zentropa">Zentropa</a> at the helm.</p>
<p>The companies are targeting the subscribers of several ISPs, including Telia, Tele2 and Bredbandsbolaget, the provider that will shortly begin blocking The Pirate Bay. It&#8217;s not clear how many people will be targeted but Breakit says that many thousands of IP addresses cover 42 pages of court documents.</p>
<p>Bredbandsbolaget confirmed that a court order exists and it will be forced to hand over the personal details of its subscribers.</p>
<p>&#8220;The first time we received such a request, we appealed because we do not think that the privacy-related sacrifice is proportionate to the crimes that were allegedly committed. Unfortunately we lost and must now follow the court order,&#8221; a spokesperson said.</p>
<p>It appears the trolls are taking extreme measures to ensure that ISPs comply. Some Swedish ISPs have a policy of deleting IP address logs but earlier this week a court ordered Telia to preserve data or face a $22,000 fine.</p>
<p>Jeppe Brogaard Clausen of the Njord lawfirm says that after identifying the subscribers he wants to &#8220;enter into non-aggressive dialogue&#8221; with them. But while this might sound like a friendly approach, the ultimate aim will be to extract money. It&#8217;s also worth considering who is behind this operation.</p>
<p>The BitTorrent tracking in the case was carried out by MaverickEye, a German-based company that continually turns up in similar cases all over Europe and the United States. The company and its operator Patrick Achache are part of the notorious Guardaley trolling operation.</p>
<p>Also of interest is the involvement of UK-based <a href="https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09276690/officers">Copyright Management Services Ltd</a>, whose sole director is none other than Patrick Achache himself. The company is based at the same London address as fellow copyright trolling partner Hatton and Berkeley, which previously sent cash settlement demands to Internet users in the UK.</p>
<p>In addition to two Zentropa titles, the movies involved in the Swedish action are CELL, IT, London Has Fallen, Mechanic: Resurrection, Criminal and September of Shiraz. All have featured in previous Guardaley cases in the United States. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135478
title: HBO Goes After ‘Online’ Pirates in the Caribbean
uri: HBO-Goes-After-Online-Pirates-in-the-Caribbean
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/5U9iAQkuAgo/
content:
<p><img src="media/b865456d.hbola.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/hbola.png" alt="" width="250" height="140" class="alignright size-full wp-image-135479">HBO&#8217;s daughter company in Latin America, HBO LA, is not happy with the rampant piracy that&#8217;s taking place in the Caribbean.</p>
<p>Earlier this month the company submitted its latest 301 ‘watch list’ submission to the U.S. Government, urging the authorities to take appropriate action. </p>
<p>HBO is steadily expanding its services to the Caribbean and Central American regions. However, their efforts to roll out legitimate services are frustrated by local pirates. These aren&#8217;t just individual pirates, large cable operators are in on it too.</p>
<p>&#8220;&#8230;a lack of enforcement by Caribbean and Central American governments is allowing local cable operators to build substantial enterprise value by increasing their subscriber base through offering pirated content,&#8221; HBO LA <a href="media/309519c2.HBO_Latin_America_Group_2017_Special_301_Review_Comment-1.pdf" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/HBO_Latin_America_Group_2017_Special_301_Review_Comment-1.pdf">writes (pdf)</a>. </p>
<p>The same goes for hotels, which treat their visitors to prime HBO programming without paying a proper license. </p>
<p>&#8220;In addition to piracy by large cable providers, non-U.S. owned hotel chains on a variety of islands are known to pirate content exclusively licensed to HBO LA by using their own onsite facilities or obtaining service from cable operators who pirate,&#8221; HBO LA informs the government. </p>
<p>Piracy by cable operators and hotels is not new. HBO has reported these issues to the authorities before, but thus far little has changed. In the meantime, however, the company has started to notice another worrying trend.</p>
<p>Online piracy has started to become more prevalent, with many stores now selling IPTV boxes and other devices that allow users to access HBO content without permission.     </p>
<p>&#8220;In the past year, HBO LA continued to see a significant increase in the problem of online piracy of its service throughout all of HBO LA’s territory,&#8221; HBO LA writes.</p>
<p>&#8220;In the Caribbean, several brick-and-mortar stores customarily sell Roku or generic Android set-top devices (like the Mag250, Avov, and the MXIII) preinstalled with an unlicensed streaming service and offering a few hundred channels  of content, including content for which HBO LA holds exclusive license in the territory.&#8221;</p>
<p><center><strong>A Facebook ad highlighted by HBO LA</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/8ea3626f.gizmos-e1487685074604.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/gizmos-e1487685074604.png" alt="" width="600" height="387" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-135480"></center></p>
<p>The company lists various examples of stores that offer these kinds of products including the Gizmos and Gadgets Electronics store in Guyana. This store sells Roku devices with an unlicensed streaming service called &#8220;ROKU TV&#8221; pre-installed.</p>
<p>By selling &#8220;pirate&#8221; subscriptions to thousands of customers the company is making over a million dollars per year, HBO estimates. And more recently the same store started to sell a subscription-less service as well.</p>
<p>&#8220;Additionally, Gizmos and Gadgets Electronics has recently started offering a second integrated hardware and service device known as the Gizmo TV BOX, which offers over 200 channels with no monthly fee,&#8221; HBO LA writes.</p>
<p>This is just one example of the many that are listed by the Latin American daughter of HBO.</p>
<p>The cable provider says it&#8217;s already taken various steps to stop the different types of infringements but hopes that U.S. authorities will help out where local governments fail. Towards the end of their submission, HBO LA encourages the United States Trade Representative to apply appropriate pressure and threats, to turn the tide.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135705
title: Steal This Show S02E11: How The Swarm Will Beat The Cloud
uri: Steal-This-Show-S02E11-How-The-Swarm-Will-Beat-The-Cloud
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/vozcKTTmTqA/
content:
<p><img src="media/d01749d9.stslogo180.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/stslogo180.png" alt="stslogo180" width="180" height="180" class="alignright size-full wp-image-113928"><strong><sup><em>If you enjoy this episode, consider becoming a patron and getting involved with the show. <a href="https://patreon.com/user?u=4275705">Check out Steal This Show&#8217;s Patreon campaign</a>: support us and get all kinds of&nbsp;fantastic benefits!</em></sup></strong></p>
<p>This episode features the CEO of <a href="https://storj.io/">Storj.io</a>, Shawn Wilkinson to discuss how BitTorrent-like swarms could be the future of online file storage. </p>
<p>In addition to beating services like Dropbox and Google Drive on price, Storj has built-in encryption that makes it impossible to snoop on files &#8211;  plus its decentralized infrastructure makes it next to impossible to censor them or take them down. </p>
<p>Sound familiar? </p>
<p>Previous episodes on <a href="https://stealthisshow.com/s02e01/">Zeronet</a>, <a href="https://stealthisshow.com/s02e04/">Yours Network</a>, and the <a href="https://stealthisshow.com/s01e04/">Distributed Library of Alexandria</a> have proved that there&#8217;s a new groundswell of interest in peer-to-peer content services that put control of content back in the hands of users. Storj is already available in beta form and ready to test out today. Could this be technology that kills Big Content&#8217;s surveillance-ridden cloud? Tune in and find out!</p>
<p>&#8212;</p>
<p><a href="https://stealthisshow.com">Steal This Show</a> aims to release bi-weekly episodes featuring insiders discussing copyright and file-sharing news. It complements our regular reporting by adding more room for opinion, commentary, and analysis. </p>
<p>The guests for our news discussions will vary, and we&#8217;ll aim to introduce voices from different backgrounds and persuasions. In addition to news, STS will also produce features interviewing some of the great innovators and minds. </p>
<p><strong>Host:</strong> Jamie King</p>
<p><strong>Guest:</strong> Shawn Wilkinson</p>
<p><center><iframe width="100%" height="180px" src="//stealthisshow.com/?lpe-frame=1&#038;lpe-season=2&#038;lpe-episode=11" frameborder="0"></iframe></center></p>
<p><strong>Produced </strong> <em>by </em>Jamie King<br>
<strong>Edited &#038; Mixed</strong> <em>by</em> Riley Byrne<br>
<strong>Original Music</strong> <em>by</em> David Triana<br>
<strong>Web Production</strong> <em>by</em> Siraje Amarniss</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135041
title: All Oscar Nominees Are Available on Pirate Sites
uri: All-Oscar-Nominees-Are-Available-on-Pirate-Sites
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/F8MsD4ZrUp0/
content:
<p><img src="media/7cffd0f4.oscartorrents.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/oscartorrents.png" alt="" width="185" height="198" class="alignright size-full wp-image-22131">The Oscars is the most watched awards show of the year, closely followed by hundreds of millions of movie fans around the world.</p>
<p>This week Hollywood&#8217;s finest are gathering at the red carpet once again. While they associate the celebration with eternal fame and recognition, for online pirates it&#8217;s a highly anticipated event as well.</p>
<p>Traditionally, Oscar winners tend to do very well in pirate circles, so we decided to take a look at the availability of this year’s contenders through unauthorized channels. </p>
<p>Relying on <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1H8eds6jEe-BXoXIFH1RdbgigVtWdpyc8A9gyqHUt4Do/edit#gid=0">data</a> from Oscar piracy watcher <a href="http://waxy.org/">Andy Baio</a>, we see that all nominated<sup>*</sup> films are now available on pirate sites, most in decent quality too. There&#8217;s only one film that hasn&#8217;t been released as a screener, Blu-Ray or other high-quality rip, and that&#8217;s &#8220;Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.&#8221;</p>
<p>Ironically, the Star Wars movie was one of the most anticipated releases during the screener season and despite various <a href="media/74686377.rogueone.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/rogueone.png">teases</a> and rumored leaks, it hasn&#8217;t come out yet. Instead, Star Wars pirates have had to settle for a HDTS copy.</p>
<p>Another issue that deserves a closer look is the availability of leaked screener copies. </p>
<p>For well over a decade, pirated screeners of the latest movies have started to leak online around December. Ironically, many of these titles leaked from DVD screener copies which were sent out to reviewers, including Academy members who vote for the Oscars.</p>
<p>This year, however, &#8220;screener season&#8221; started out a bit different than before. Previously, the first leaked screeners always came out before December 16th but this time it <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/screener-season-is-here-but-where-are-the-piracy-leaks-161218/">remained quiet</a>. </p>
<p>When Christmas came there were still no leaked screeners, and it took until early January before the ball started rolling.</p>
<p>The silence was broken <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/first-dvd-screener-leak-of-2017-is-denzel-washingtons-fences-170103/">with a release</a> of the Denzel Washington movie Fences and soon after more and more screeners appeared online. While some feared that screener season would never be the same again, at the end of the road it turned out to be a relatively regular year. </p>
<p>With just a few hours to go before the awards ceremony, a total of 14 screeners of nominated films have leaked online, which is comparable to previous years.</p>
<p><center><strong>Screener leaks of Oscar nominees</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/27aec32a.oscarscreen2017.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/oscarscreen2017.png" alt="" width="673" height="434" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-135659"></center></p>
<p>The chart above shows an overview of the screener leaks per year. These are only for movies that eventually received an Academy Awards nomination<sup>*</sup>, so the total number will be even higher.</p>
<p>Finally, it&#8217;s worth noting that despite the widespread availability of pirate copies, screener leaks appear to be under a bit of pressure. Like previous years, most of the leaked screeners have been released by Hive-CM8. </p>
<p>This means that one group has to carry a pretty heavy burden. If they stop doing what they do, the screener supply could be severely limited.</p>
<p>That said, the focus on screeners might be a bit overstated. Except for a few prominent leaks, the interest in screener copies is not significantly higher than the average HDrip or Blu-Ray release, which are still widely available.</p>
<p>&#8212;</p>
<p><em><sub>Foreign film and documentary categories are not included</sub></em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135651
title: Russia Drafts Legislation to Remove Pirate Sites From Search Engines
uri: Russia-Drafts-Legislation-to-Remove-Pirate-Sites-From-Search-Engines
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/bgbexNsMeEY/
content:
<p><a href="media/560a9ef5.searchman.jpg" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/searchman.jpg"><img src="media/e92721d2.searchman.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/searchman.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="156" class="alignright size-full wp-image-135409"></a>Copyright holders all over the world believe that search engines play a crucial role in the piracy ecosystem. They argue that when seeking out content, people often use sites like Google, which can lead them to infringing material on pirate sites.</p>
<p>Entertainment companies can address the problem by sending takedown notices, but they insist that&#8217;s a very inefficient process. Pirate content is way too visible in search results, they argue, particularly when it appears in the first few pages of results.</p>
<p>With most countries continuing to grapple with the issue, it now appears that Russia intends to legislate against it. This week, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev submitted a draft bill to parliament that will force search engines to remove specified pirate sites from their results.</p>
<p>Developed by the Ministry of Communications, the bill will compel search companies such as Google and local giant Yandex to deindex sites that have failed to respond to takedown requests on several occasions, perhaps as little as twice.</p>
<p>One such example is huge torrent site RuTracker, which was <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/rutracker-counters-lifetime-isp-ban-by-going-public-151109/">blocked by local ISPs</a> following an order from the Moscow City Court. RuTracker was effectively told to remove around 320,000 torrents to avoid a ban but chose not to do so after running a poll among its users. Under current legislation, RuTracker is now blocked for life, and if the new law is passed, all of its pages will disappear from search engines.</p>
<p>The draft bill also targets counter-measures employed by sites attempting to circumvent ISP blockades.</p>
<p>Often, when one domain is blocked, sites will buy new domains in an effort to keep going. Others will use proxy sites and even full-scale mirrors to stay one step ahead of the court. The bill refers to all of these options as &#8220;derivative sites&#8221; and will allow for them to be blocked without further court process.</p>
<p>The bill was approved during a government meeting on February 17 and will now pass through its various parliamentary stages before becoming law. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135529
title: Torrent Legend Mininova Will Shut Down For Good
uri: Torrent-Legend-Mininova-Will-Shut-Down-For-Good
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/ST61XPLm2cU/
content:
<p><img src="media/37832a84.mininova.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/mininova.png" alt="" width="237" height="40" class="alignright size-full wp-image-1081">In December 2004, the demise of the mighty Suprnova left a meteor crater in the fledgling BitTorrent landscape. </p>
<p>This gaping hole was soon filled by the dozens of new sites that emerged to fulfill the public’s increasing demands for torrents. Mininova soon became the most successful of them all.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.mininova.org">Mininova</a> was founded by five Dutch students just a month after Suprnova closed its doors. The site initially began as a hobby project, but in the years that followed the site’s founders managed to turn it into a successful business that generated millions of dollars in revenue.</p>
<p>With this success also came legal pressure. Even though the site complied with takedown requests, copyright holders were not amused. In 2009 this eventually resulted in a lawsuit filed by local anti-piracy outfit BREIN, which Mininova lost. </p>
<p>As a result, the site had to remove all infringing torrents, a move which ended its reign. The site remained online but instead of allowing everyone to upload content, Mininova permitted only pre-approved publishers to submit files.</p>
<p>Now, more than seven years after &#8220;going legal&#8221; the site will shut down for good. A notice published on the website urges uploaders to back up their files before April 4th, when the plug will be pulled.</p>
<p><center><strong>Mininova&#8217;s shutting down</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/c8f4a882.minidown.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/minidown.png" alt="" width="553" height="112" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-135544"></center></p>
<p>The decision doesn&#8217;t mean that the legal contribution platform was a total failure. In fact, over 950 million &#8216;legal&#8217; torrents were downloaded from Mininova in recent years. However, the site&#8217;s income couldn&#8217;t make up for the costs. </p>
<p>&#8220;All goods things come to an end, and after more than 12 years we think it&#8217;s a good time to shut down the site which has been running at a loss for some years,&#8221; Mininova co-founder Niek tells TorrentFreak.</p>
<p>Looking back, Mininova has many great memories. The site&#8217;s users have always been very grateful, for example, and there were also several artists who thanked the site&#8217;s operators for offering them a great promotional tool.</p>
<p>&#8220;The support from our users was especially amazing to experience, millions of people used the site on a daily basis and we got many emails each day &#8211; ranging from a simple &#8216;thank you&#8217; to some extensive story how a specific upload made their day,&#8221; Niek says. </p>
<p>&#8220;The feedback from artists was great to see as well, many thanked us for promoting their content, as some of them broke through and signed with labels as a result,&#8221; he adds. </p>
<p>The file-sharing and piracy ecosystem has changed quite a bit since Mininova&#8217;s dominance. File-hosting services became more popular first, and nowadays streaming sites and tools with slick user interfaces are the new standard. </p>
<p>Torrent sites, on the other hand, show little progress according to Mininova&#8217;s founder, who believes that the growth of legal services could make them less relevant in the future.</p>
<p>&#8220;We haven&#8217;t seen many changes in the last decade &#8211; the current torrent sites look very similar to what Mininova did twelve years ago,&#8221; Niek says.</p>
<p>&#8220;With content-specific distribution platforms such as Spotify and Netflix becoming more and more widespread and bandwidth becoming cheaper, there might be less of a need for torrent sites in the future.&#8221;</p>
<p>The original founders of Mininova have moved on as well. They&#8217;re no longer students and have parted ways, moving on to different projects and ventures. Now and then, however, they look back at how their lives looked ten years ago, with a smile. </p>
<p>&#8220;Overall we&#8217;re happy that we have been a part of the history of the Internet,&#8221; Niek concludes.</p>
<p>&#8220;We want to thank everybody who has been around and supported us through the times! Without our users, there would have been no Mininova. So THANK YOU!&#8221;</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135722
title: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 02/27/17
uri: Top-10-Most-Pirated-Movies-of-The-Week-on-BitTorrent-02-27-17
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/Fu8na_Ewrdc/
content:
<p><img src="media/cd4e8848.fantbeasts.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/fantbeasts.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="163" class="alignright size-full wp-image-131400">This week we have two newcomers in our chart. </p>
<p>Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is the most downloaded movie.</p>
<p>The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.</p>
<p><a href="http://TorrentFreak.com/category/dvdrip/feed/"><strong>RSS feed</strong></a> for the weekly movie download chart.</p>
<h5>This week&#8217;s most downloaded movies are:</h5>
<table class="css hover">
<thead>
<tr>
<th width="12%"><strong>Movie Rank</strong></th>
<th width="15%"><strong>Rank <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-pirated-movies-week-022017/">last week</a></strong></th>
<th><strong>Movie name</strong></th>
<th width="18%"><strong>IMDb Rating / Trailer</strong></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tfoot>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">Most downloaded movies via torrents</td>
</tr>
</tfoot>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><strong>1</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3183660/">Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3183660/">7.6</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vso5o11LuGU">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>2</strong></td>
<td>(6)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1355644/">Passengers</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1355644/">7.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BWWWQzTpNU">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>3</strong></td>
<td>(1)</td>
<td><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/doctor-strange-torrent-downloads/">Doctor Strange</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1211837">8.0</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSzx-zryEgM">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>4</strong></td>
<td>(5)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2094766/">Assassin&#8217;s Creed</a> (Subbed HDRip)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2094766/">6.3</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4haJD6W136c">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>5</strong></td>
<td>(3)</td>
<td><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/arrival-torrent-downloads/">Arrival</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/">8.3</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFMo3UJ4B4g">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>6</strong></td>
<td>(2)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3521164/">Moana</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3521164/">7.8</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPAbx5kgCJo">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>7</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4682786/">Collateral Beauty</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4682786/">6.6</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isQ5Ycie73U">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>8</strong></td>
<td>(4)</td>
<td><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/hacksaw-ridge-torrent-downloads/">Hacksaw Ridge</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2119532/">8.5</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2-1hz1juBI">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>9</strong></td>
<td>(10)</td>
<td><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/jack-reacher-never-go-back-torrent-downloads/">Jack Reacher: Never Go Back</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3393786">6.3</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRwrdbcAh2s">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>10</strong></td>
<td>(8)</td>
<td><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/la-la-land-torrent-downloads/">La La Land</a> (DVDscr)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3783958/">8.8</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pdqf4P9MB8">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135730
title: Pirate Bay Prosecution In Trouble, Time Runs Out For Investigators
uri: Pirate-Bay-Prosecution-In-Trouble-Time-Runs-Out-For-Investigators
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/NXywFvm8DhQ/
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">December 2014, The Pirate Bay went dark after police <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/swedish-police-raid-the-pirate-bay-site-offline-141209/">raided the Nacka station</a>, a nuclear-proof datacenter built into a mountain complex near Stockholm.</p>
<p>The hosting facility reportedly offered services to The Pirate Bay, EZTV and several other torrent related sites, which were pulled offline as a result. </p>
<p>The authorities later announced that 50 servers were seized during the raid. And not without success, it seemed. The raid resulted in the longest ever period of downtime for The Pirate Bay, nearly two months, and led to chaos and a <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-wont-make-a-full-comeback-staff-revolt-150127/">revolt</a> among the site’s staffers.</p>
<p>However, despite a new criminal investigation <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-investigation-will-take-months-to-complete-150110/">into The Pirate Bay</a>, the site has been operating as usual for a while now. As it now transpires, the raid may not result in any future prosecutions.</p>
<p>According to prosecutor Henrik Rasmusson, who took over the case from Fredrik Ingblad last year, time is running out. Some of the alleged crimes date back more than five years, which is outside the statute of limitations. </p>
<p>&#8220;Some of the suspected crimes are from 2011, although the seizures are from 2014. And the statute of limitations on them are five years,&#8221; prosecutor Henrik Rasmusson <a href="http://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.676711/pirate-bay-brott-preskriberat">told IDG</a>.</p>
<p>While several years have passed, there&#8217;s not much progress to report. The police provided the prosecutor with some updates along the way, but it&#8217;s not clear when the investigation will be completed. </p>
<p>&#8220;I have over time received new information from the police, but I have not received any clear indication of when the investigation will be completed,&#8221; the prosecutor said.</p>
<p>Even if the investigation is finalized, there are still a lot of steps to take before any indictments are ready. Meanwhile, the quality of the evidence isn&#8217;t getting any better. Based on his comments, the prosecutor isn&#8217;t very optimistic in this regard.</p>
<p>&#8220;The oral evidence could get worse because people forget. There may be difficulties with other monitoring data that may have changed or disappeared, such as registers and data restorations,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>This isn&#8217;t the first setback for the authorities. Previously, they had to <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/police-drop-investigation-into-pirate-bay-suspect-160112/">drop one of the main suspects</a> from the case as they lacked sufficient resources to analyze the data that were seized during the raid.</p>
<p>On top of that, people from the Pirate Bay team itself <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-what-raid-police-never-got-our-servers-150921/">said</a> that if they were indeed the target, the police didn&#8217;t have much on them.</p>
<p>According to the TPB team, only one of their servers was confiscated in 2014, and this one was hosted at a different location. The server in question was operated by the moderators and used as a communication channel for TPB matters.</p>
<p>The team said that it chose to pull their actual site offline as a precaution but that relocating to a new home proved to be harder than expected, hence the prolonged downtime.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135720
title: Megaupload Case Takes Toll on Finn Batato, But He’ll Keep Fighting
uri: Megaupload-Case-Takes-Toll-on-Finn-Batato-But-He-ll-Keep-Fighting
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/JYLzmqH5Ggg/
content:
<p><a href="media/29219ba9.megaupload-logo.jpg" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/megaupload-logo.jpg"><img src="media/9a9629f5.megaupload-logo.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/megaupload-logo.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="208" class="alignright size-full wp-image-95191"></a>Whenever there&#8217;s a new headline about the years-long prosecution of Megaupload, it is usually Kim Dotcom&#8217;s image adorning publications around the world. In many ways, the German-born entrepreneur is the face of the United States&#8217; case against the defunct storage site, and he appears to like it that way.</p>
<p>Thanks to his continuous presence on Twitter, regular appearances in the media, alongside <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/canadian-stock-exchange-blocked-megaupload-2-0-plans-170124/">promotion</a> of new file-sharing platforms, one might be forgiven for thinking Dotcom was fighting the US single-handedly. But quietly and very much in the background, three other men are also battling for their freedom.</p>
<p>Megaupload programmers Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk face a similar fate to Dotcom but have stayed almost completely silent since their arrests in 2012. Former site advertising manager Finn Batato, whose name headlines the entire case (US v. Finn Batato) has been a little more vocal though, and from recent comments we learn that the US prosecution is taking its toll.</p>
<p>Seven years ago before the raid, Batato was riding the crest of a wave as Megaupload&#8217;s CMO. According to the FBI he pocketed $630,000 in 2010 and was regularly seen out with Dotcom having fun, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf3bjKwwlMM">racing around the Nürburgring&#8217;s Nordschleife</a> track with Formula 1 star Kimi Raikkonen, for example. But things are different now.</p>
<p><center><b>Finn with Kimi Raikkonen</b><a href="media/f4f44fef.finn-kimi.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/finn-kimi.png"><img src="media/afbddcd8.finn-kimi.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/finn-kimi.png" alt="" width="650" height="324" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-135753"></a></center></p>
<p>While still involved with Mega, the new file-sharing site that Dotcom founded and then left after what appears to be an acrimonious split, Batato is reportedly feeling the pressure. In a new interview with <a href="http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2017/02/kim-dotcom-s-co-accused-facing-extradition.html">Newshub</a>, the marketing expert says that his marriage is on the rocks, a direct result of the US case against him.</p>
<p>According to Batato, he&#8217;s now living in someone else&#8217;s house, something he hasn&#8217;t done &#8220;for 25 years.&#8221; It&#8217;s a far cry from the waterside luxury being enjoyed by Dotcom.</p>
<p>Batato met wife Anastasia back in 2012, not long after the raid and while he was still under house arrest. The pair married in 2015 and have two children, Leo and Oskar.</p>
<p>&#8220;The constant pressure over your head &#8211; not knowing what is there to come, is very hard, very tough,&#8221; Batato said in an earlier interview with NZHerald.</p>
<p>&#8220;Everything that happens in our life happens with that big black cloud over our heads which especially has an impact on me and my mood because I can&#8217;t just switch it off. If everything goes down the hill, maybe I will see [my sons] once every month in a prison cell. That breaks my heart. I can&#8217;t enjoy it as much as I would want to. It&#8217;s highly stressful.&#8221;</p>
<p>Since then, Batato has been busy. While working as Mega&#8217;s Chief Marketing Officer, the German citizen has been learning about the law. He&#8217;s had to. Unlike Dotcom who can retain the best lawyers in the game, Batato says he has few resources.</p>
<p>What savings he had were seized on the orders of the United States in Hong Kong back in 2012, and he previously admitted to having to check his bank account before buying groceries. As a result he&#8217;s been conducting his own legal defense for almost two years.</p>
<p>In 2015 he reportedly received praise while doing so, with lawyers appearing for his co-defendants commending him when he stood up to argue a point during a Megaupload hearing. &#8220;I was kind of proud about that,&#8221; he <a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&#038;objectid=11515654">said</a>.</p>
<p>Like Dotcom (with whom he claims to be on &#8220;good terms&#8221;), Batato insists that he&#8217;s done nothing wrong. He shares his former colleague&#8217;s optimism that he won&#8217;t be extradited and will take his case to the Supreme Court, should all else fail.</p>
<p>That may be necessary. Last week, the New Zealand High Court <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/kim-dotcom-extradition-to-go-ahead-but-not-on-copyright-grounds-170220/">determined</a> that Batato and his co-defendants can be extradited to the US, albeit not on copyright grounds. Justice Murray Gilbert agreed with the US Government&#8217;s position that their case has fraud at its core, an extraditable offense.</p>
<p>In the short term, the case is expected to move to the Court of Appeal and, depending on the outcome there, potentially to the Supreme Court. Either way, this case still has years to run with plenty more legal appearances for Batato. He won&#8217;t be doing it with the legal backup enjoyed by Dotcom but he&#8217;ll share his determination.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135750
title: Putlocker Loses Domain Name Following Court Order
uri: Putlocker-Loses-Domain-Name-Following-Court-Order
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/CmzaWvXAQUE/
content:
<p><img src="media/e9fc9c01.putlockeris-1.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/putlockeris-1.png" alt="putlockeris" width="275" height="101" class="alignright size-full wp-image-129241">With dozens of millions of monthly views, <a href="http://putlocker.is/">Putlocker.is</a> is the go-to video streaming site for many people. </p>
<p>Up until last weekend, the site was ranked the <a href="http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/putlockers.ch#trafficstats">252nd most-visited</a> website on the Internet and it&#8217;s particularly popular in the United States, Canada, Australia and South Africa.</p>
<p>As one of the largest ‘pirate sites’ on the Internet, Putlocker is a thorn in the side of rightsholders. It&#8217;s also <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/us-government-brands-the-wrong-putlocker-as-pirate-site-161224/">on the radar</a> of the US Government after the Office of the US Trade Representative put it on its annual list of “notorious markets,” but actually cited an incorrect domain.</p>
<p>This week another domain issue cropped up for the site. After <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/putlocker-is-mysteriously-goes-down-161014/">losing its Putlocker.is</a> domain name late last year, the site&#8217;s recent Putlockers.ch fallback is now gone as well. </p>
<p>Users who try to access the site will see that it <a href="http://putlockers.ch/">no longer loads</a>. A Whois search reveals that the domain has been taken over by the registrar EuroDNS, who&#8217;ve pointed it to a 127.0.0.1 blackhole. </p>
<p><center><strong>Putlockers.ch now owned by EuroDNS</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/2de61041.putwhois.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/putwhois.png" alt="" width="580" height="292" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-135775"></center></p>
<p>TorrentFreak reached out to EuroDNS Chief Legal Officer Luc Seufer who informed us that they were required to take this drastic measure following an order from the Tribunal d’arrondissement de Luxembourg.</p>
<p>The court rendered a decision in favor of the <a href="http://www.belgianentertainment.be/en/">Belgian Entertainment Association</a> last week, which required the registrar to suspend the domain. To avoid the Putlocker operator from taking it to another registrar, EuroDNS is now listed as the owner.</p>
<p>&#8220;The owner modification was the sole means we had at our disposal to comply with the decision which requires that EuroDNS prevent any &#8216;reactivation&#8217; of this domain name until its expiration date,&#8221; Seufer informs us.</p>
<p>&#8220;Our customer has been duly notified and provided with a copy of the decision,&#8221; he adds.</p>
<p>The Putlocker team has yet to comment on the issue. The site&#8217;s <a href="https://www.facebook.com/putlockers.ch/">official Facebook page</a> hasn&#8217;t been updated since the downtime, despite a barrage of questions from users. The most recent message is from last week, referring to an earlier &#8216;attack.&#8217;</p>
<p>At the time the site also warned not to trust various copycats, which ironically are widely promoted elsewhere on the Facebook page now.</p>
<p>To find out more about the nature of the blocking order and other potential targets we contacted the Belgian Entertainment Association. However, at the time of publication, we have yet to receive a reply.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135786
title: ‘Kodi Box’ Consultation Launched By Intellectual Property Office
uri: Kodi-Box-Consultation-Launched-By-Intellectual-Property-Office
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/gdAGK-7BjDY/
content:
<p><a href="media/b356fd08.kodi.jpg" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/kodi.jpg"><img src="media/86968eca.kodi.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/kodi.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="200" class="alignright size-full wp-image-106816"></a>As BitTorrent usage continues year after year, a new piracy opportunity has been gathering momentum in more recent times. Known on the street as &#8216;Kodi Boxes&#8217; after the legal software they use as a base, these devices enable consumers to access every type of media available, for a very small outlay.</p>
<p>While in the past a full-blown PC would have been used to consume movies, TV shows, music and live events via illicit sites, augmented Kodi setups can achieve the same on cheap set-top Android hardware, even phones and tablets. This barrier to entry is an all-time low in piracy circles and of serious concern to rightsholders.</p>
<p>These concerns are perhaps most visible in the UK, where police and anti-piracy groups have been tackling people who sell this kind of hardware for infringing uses. There have been some arrests and cases are pending, but there appears to be an underlying nervousness that current legislation simply isn&#8217;t up to the job. That&#8217;s where the government has now stepped in.</p>
<p>In a consultation launched by the Intellectual Property Office, the government calls for input from groups with experience of investigating and prosecuting offenses relating to illicit streaming devices, although anyone with relevant information can participate.</p>
<p>&#8220;Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) boxes (also known as set-top boxes, Android TVboxes or Kodi boxes) are small plug and play media servers, originally designed to allow consumers to stream legitimate content (locally stored or legal online content),&#8221; the IPO begins.</p>
<p>&#8220;Despite the legitimate use of this equipment, software is widely available (illicit Kodi extensions being the best known) which connect the boxes to illegal content through streaming websites, file lockers and BitTorrent trackers.&#8221;</p>
<p>The IPO notes that these devices are now widely available from well-known online retailers at low prices, something that has led to a sharp increase in use by consumers. This has unsettled those who make money from the official distribution of copyrighted content.</p>
<p>&#8220;Broadcasters and content owners have voiced concerns that, although a range of<br>
existing legislation applies to the sale and use of these devices (as well as the<br>
provision of illicit content streams), the legal framework does not provide sufficient tools to tackle this growing threat,&#8221; the IPO notes.</p>
<p>From information published thus far, it seems likely that the government will consider tightening up any branch of legislation that could apply to these devices, whether that concerns their advertising, sale, supply, or even end use. </p>
<p>Under the general banner of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988, the IPO suggests that several pieces of legislation <em>may</em> already apply to Kodi-type devices, including <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/297">s297</a> &#8211; fraudulent reception of transmissions, <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/297A">s297a</a> &#8211; unauthorized decoders, through to <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/296ZB">s296ZB</a> &#8211; devices and services designed to circumvent technological measures</p>
<p>The latter will be tested later this year in the case against Kodi box seller <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-kodi-box-seller-enters-not-guilty-plea-landmark-trial/">Brian Thompson</a>. It&#8217;s unlikely to be straightforward and experts have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/fact-lawyer-reveals-challenges-kodi-box-seller-prosecutions-170106/">already warned</a> that prosecutions using existing legislation raise issues.</p>
<p>But while tweaking copyright law seems an obvious choice, the government is urging consideration of other charges too.</p>
<p>Under the Fraud Act 2006, <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/section/6">possession</a> and/or <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/section/7">making or supplying articles</a> for use in fraud are highlighted, as is the offense of <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/section/11">obtaining services dishonestly</a>.</p>
<p>Like &#8220;fraudulent reception of transmissions&#8221; (listed above in the copyright section), &#8220;obtaining services dishonestly&#8221; could conceivably be applied to end users of Kodi devices, given the right circumstances. However, the former currently only warrants a fine while the latter has provisions for up to five years imprisonment.</p>
<p>The consultation is certainly interesting and one that is likely to provoke much debate moving forward. In some respects, however, it is a little puzzling.</p>
<p>While a tightening of the law may result in more straightforward prosecutions, it&#8217;s difficult to see how current legislation doesn&#8217;t already cover most eventualities, particularly when it comes to prosecuting people who advertise and supply boxes for illegal purposes during the course of a business.</p>
<p>However, perhaps the more worrying aspect is what appears to be a new focus on the end users of such devices rather than just the sellers. It&#8217;s worth keeping in mind that users of these boxes are merely streaming content from the Internet in much the same way as they would with a normal web browser, something that is <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/watching-pirate-streams-isnt-illegal-eu-commission-argues-161001/">probably not illegal</a> under existing EU law.</p>
<p>The consultation (<a href="media/6124da84.illicit-IPTV-streaming-devices-call-for-views.pdf" data-original-source="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/594048/illicit-IPTV-streaming-devices-call-for-views.pdf">pdf</a>) closes April 7, 2017.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135834
title: Alleged KickassTorrents Owner Can be Extradited to The US, Court Rules
uri: Alleged-KickassTorrents-Owner-Can-be-Extradited-to-The-US-Court-Rules
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/UOI68Lqa0Dc/
content:
<p><img src="media/75141223.kickasstorrents_500x500-300x300.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/kickasstorrents_500x500-300x300.png" alt="kickasstorrents_500x500" width="222" height="222" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-96995" srcset="https://torrentfreak.com/images/kickasstorrents_500x500-300x300.png 300w, https://torrentfreak.com/images/kickasstorrents_500x500-150x150.png 150w, https://torrentfreak.com/images/kickasstorrents_500x500.png 500w" sizes="(max-width: 222px) 100vw, 222px">Last summer Polish law enforcement officers <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/feds-seize-kickasstorrents-domains-charge-owner-160720/">arrested Artem Vaulin</a>, the alleged founder of KickassTorrents, who’s been held in custody since.</p>
<p>Polish authorities acted on a criminal complaint from the US Government, which accused him of criminal copyright infringement and money laundering.</p>
<p>Facing severe back problems, Vaulin was transferred <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/alleged-kickasstorrents-owner-leaves-prison-hospital-161210/">to a hospital</a> in December. In both the US and Poland his legal has been fighting the extradition request in court, which resulted in a setback this week.  </p>
<p>Following a series of hearings that started early last month, the Warsaw District Court ruled in first instance that the alleged KickassTorrents owner can be extradited. </p>
<p>While the ruling is bad news, the decision <a href="http://www.rp.pl/Prawo-karne/302289921-Sad-zgodzil-sie-na-ekstradycje-do-USA-wlasciciela-platformy-internetowej-Kickass-Torrents.html">isn&#8217;t final yet</a>. In Poland, the legality of extraditions is decided in two stages. If the court also agrees in second instance, the Minister of Justice then issues the final decision.</p>
<p>The Court has not yet released the details of its initial decision. According to the Court&#8217;s press service &#8220;the written opinion on the decision is postponed for the duration of 7 days, because of the complexity and breadth of the case.&#8221;</p>
<p>If the lower court grants the extradition request in full, Vaulin can also take the case to the Supreme Court for a review. Meanwhile, the alleged KickassTorrents operator remains in a local hospital where he&#8217;s still being treated for his back problems.</p>
<p>If the extradition is granted, Vaulin will have to face a criminal trial in the United States. </p>
<p>The Department of Justice accuses Vaulin and his co-conspirators of operating the largest piracy haven on the Internet, which made millions of dollars per year. As such, they are being held responsible for unlawfully distributing over $1 billion of copyrighted materials</p>
<p>In addition to the Polish extradition process, an equally crucial ruling is forthcoming in the US as well. </p>
<p>Last month Vaulin&#8217;s legal counsel <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/us-and-kickasstorrents-go-head-to-head-in-court-170202/">asked the Illinois District Court</a> to dismiss the criminal indictment and set his client free, arguing that there&#8217;s no proof of actual criminal copyright infringement.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135820
title: ISP Blocks Pirate Bay But Vows to Fight Future Blocking Demands
uri: ISP-Blocks-Pirate-Bay-But-Vows-to-Fight-Future-Blocking-Demands
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/POnkx-iM584/
content:
<p><a href="media/cf3f78e1.thepirate-e1470829181981.jpg" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/thepirate-e1470829181981.jpg"><img src="media/932e6d7d.thepirate-e1470829181981.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/thepirate-e1470829181981.jpg" alt="" width="220" height="206" class="alignright size-full wp-image-116122"></a>Two weeks go after almost three years of legal battles, Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, Nordisk Film and the Swedish Film Industry finally achieved their dream of blocking a ‘pirate’ site.</p>
<p>The Patent and Market Court <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-must-be-blocked-in-sweden-court-of-appeal-rules-170213/">ordered</a> Bredbandsbolaget, the ISP at the center of the action, to block The Pirate Bay and another defunct site, Swefilmer. A few hours ago the provider barred its subscribers from accessing them, just ahead of the Court deadline.</p>
<p>This pioneering legal action will almost certainly open the floodgates to similar demands in the future, but if content providers think that Bredbandsbolaget will roll over and give up, they have another thing coming.</p>
<p>In a statement announcing that it had complied with the orders of the court, the ISP said that despite having good reasons to appeal, it had been not allowed to do so. The provider adds that it finds it unreasonable that any provider should have to block content following pressure from private interests, so will fight all future requests.</p>
<p>&#8220;We are now forced to contest any future blocking demands. It is the only way for us and other Internet operators to ensure that private players should not have the last word regarding the content that should be accessible on the Internet,&#8221; Bredbandsbolaget said.</p>
<p>Noting that the chances of contesting a precedent-setting ruling are &#8220;small or non-existent&#8221;, the ISP added that not all providers will have the resources to fight, if they are targeted next. Fighting should be the aim though, since there are problems with the existing court order.</p>
<p>According to Bredbandsbolaget, the order requires it to block 100 domain names. However, the ISP says that during the trial it was not determined whether they all lead to illegal sites. In fact, it appears that some of the domains actual point to sites that are either fully legal or non-operational.</p>
<p>For example, in tests conducted by TF this morning the domain <a href="https://dreamworld-minecraft.de/">bay.malk.rocks</a> led to a Minecraft forum, fattorrents.ws and magnetsearch.net/org were dead, piratewiki.info had expired, torrentdr.com was parked and ViceTorrent.com returned error 404. Also, Swefilmer.com returned a placeholder and SweHD.com was parked and for sale.</p>
<p>&#8220;What domains should be blocked or not blocked is therefore reliant on rightsholders&#8217; sincerity, infallibility and the ability to make proportionate assessments,&#8221; Bredbandsbolaget warns.</p>
<p>&#8220;It is still unclear which body receives questions and complaints if an operator is required to mistakenly block a domain.&#8221; </p>
<p>In the wake of the blocking ruling two weeks ago, two other major ISPs in Sweden indicated that they too would put up a fight against blocking demands. </p>
<p>Bahnhof <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-blockade-signals-copyright-industrys-death-throes-isp-boss-says-170214/">slammed</a> the decision to block The Pirate Bay, describing the effort as signaling the “death throes” of the copyright industry.</p>
<p>Telia was more moderate but said it has <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/wont-block-pirate-bay-swedish-telecoms-giant-says-170221/">no intention</a> of blocking The Pirate Bay, unless it is forced to do so by law. </p>
<p>&#8212;<br>
<em><br>
The full list of domains that were blocked this morning are as follows:</p>
<p>thepiratebay.se<br>
thepiratebay.org<br>
accesspiratebay.com<br>
ahoy.one<br>
bay.malk.rocks<br>
baymirror.date<br>
baymirror.win<br>
bayproxy.date<br>
bayproxy.pw<br>
fastpiratebay.co.uk<br>
fattorrents.ws<br>
gameofbay.org<br>
ikwilthepiratebay.org<br>
kuiken.co<br>
magnetsearch.net<br>
magnetsearch.org<br>
pbp.rocks<br>
pbproxy.com<br>
piraattilahti.net<br>
pirate.trade<br>
piratebay.click<br>
piratebayblocked.com<br>
piratebayproxy.tf<br>
piratebays.co.uk<br>
piratehole.com<br>
pirateportal.xyz<br>
pirateproxies.info<br>
pirateproxies.net<br>
pirate-proxy.info<br>
pirateproxy.online<br>
pirateproxy.wf<br>
pirateproxy.vip<br>
pirateproxy.yt<br>
pirateproxybay.tech<br>
pirates.pw<br>
piratesbay.pe<br>
piratetavern.net<br>
piratetavern.org<br>
piratewiki.info<br>
proxypirate.pw<br>
proxytpb.nl<br>
thebay.tv<br>
thehiddenbay.xyz<br>
thenewbay.org<br>
thepbproxy.website<br>
thepiratebay.ar.com<br>
thepiratebay.bypassed.live<br>
thepiratebay.bypassed.red<br>
thepiratebay.bypassed.video<br>
thepiratebay.casa<br>
thepiratebay.immunicity.live<br>
thepiratebay.immunicity.video<br>
thepiratebay.immunicity.red<br>
thepiratebay.je<br>
thepiratebay.lv<br>
thepiratebay.mg<br>
thepiratebay.red<br>
thepiratebay.run<br>
thepiratebay.skillproxy.com<br>
thepiratebay.skillproxy.net<br>
thepiratebay.skillproxy.org<br>
thepiratebay.unblockthis.net<br>
torrentdr.com<br>
thepiratebay.uk.net<br>
thepiratebay.unblocked.rocks<br>
thepiratebay.unblocked.video<br>
thepiratebay.unblockerproxy.xyz<br>
thepiratebay-proxy.com<br>
thepirateproxy.co<br>
thepirateproxy.info<br>
thepirateproxy.website<br>
thepirateproxybay.xyz<br>
theproxy.pw<br>
theproxybay.pw<br>
tpb.dashitz.com<br>
tpb.patatje.eu<br>
tpb.portalimg.com<br>
tpb.proxyduck.co<br>
tpb.retro.black<br>
tpb.vrelk.com<br>
tpbay.co<br>
tpbmirror.us<br>
tpbpro.xyz<br>
tpbproxy.cc<br>
tpbproxy.pw<br>
tpbproxy.website<br>
tproxy.pro<br>
ukpirate.click<br>
ukpirate.org<br>
ukpirateproxy.xyz<br>
unblockbay.com<br>
unblockthepiratebay.net<br>
unblockthepiratebay.org<br>
urbanproxy.eu<br>
vicetorrent.com<br>
battleit.ee/tpb<br>
thepiratebay.gg<br>
bayproxy.org<br>
thepirateproxybay.site<br>
bayproxy.net<br>
swefilmer.com<br>
www.swefilmer.com<br>
swehd.com<br>
www.swehd.com</em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135872
title: EU Court Hands Copyright Defeat to Streaming Site TVCatchup
uri: EU-Court-Hands-Copyright-Defeat-to-Streaming-Site-TVCatchup
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/OPmuXhbC3oI/
content:
<p>Free-to-air TV in the UK is almost universal, with consumers offered extensive programming via an antennae or satellite dish. However, an option to view the content over the Internet hasn&#8217;t always been available.</p>
<p>Back in 2007, TVCatchup spotted a gap in the market and over the years has been streaming TV shows to the masses for free but without rightsholders&#8217; permission. In many markets TVCatchup would be immediately considered a &#8216;pirate&#8217; service but the site had an unusual defense.</p>
<p>Under <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/73">Section 73</a> of the UK&#8217;s Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, copyright in a wireless broadcast is not infringed when a party re-transmits that content by cable within &#8220;the area of initial broadcast&#8221;.</p>
<p>The legislation was drawn up to support the development of cable infrastructure in the 1980s and 1990s but TVCatchup felt that it applied to them when they captured UK broadcasters&#8217; signals and retransmitted them over the Internet.</p>
<p>Needless to say, broadcasters including ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 felt differently. They took the service to court, arguing that the platform was illegal under <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/20">Section 20</a> of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA), which declares infringement when a copyrighted broadcast is communicated to the public.</p>
<p>The High Court sided with TVCatchup, so the broadcasters took the case to the Court of Appeal, arguing that Internet streaming services are not entitled to protection under legislation intended for cable operators.</p>
<p>In common with other complex copyright cases, the Court of Appeal sought clarification from the Court of Justice of the European Union. Taking the view that section 73 of the CDPA should be interpreted in the light of Article 9 of Directive 2001/29, the Court of Appeal asked several questions, including whether the term &#8220;cable&#8221; could refer to Internet services.</p>
<p>The CJEU handed down its decision yesterday, ruling that when TVCatchup streamed copyrighted content without permission, that amounted to a communication to the public and was therefore illegal.</p>
<p>&#8220;The principal objective of that directive is to establish a high level of protection of authors, allowing them to obtain an appropriate reward for the use of their works, including on the occasion of communication to the public,&#8221; the Court <a href="http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&#038;docid=188484&#038;pageIndex=0&#038;doclang=EN&#038;mode=req&#038;dir=&#038;occ=first&#038;part=1&#038;cid=454080">wrote</a>.</p>
<p>&#8220;Having regard to that high level of protection of authors, the Court &#8230;. held that the concept of ‘communication to the public’ &#8230; must be interpreted broadly &#8230; and that a retransmission by means of an internet stream, such as that at issue in the main proceedings, constitutes such a communication.&#8221;</p>
<p>Additionally, the CJEU found that Article 9 of Directive 2001/29 does not permit &#8220;national legislation which provides that copyright is not infringed in the case of the immediate retransmission by cable, including, where relevant, via the internet.&#8221;</p>
<p>That statement is effectively a huge thumbs-down to Section 73 of the CDPA on which TVCatchup had formed its defense.</p>
<p>While that will be bad news for TVCatchup, it will be of little hardship to the UK Government. The Digital Economy Bill currently moving through Parliament contains an amendment to remove Section 73 from the CDPA, with the government noting during a consultation that it was never intended to apply to Internet services.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135907
title: ExtraTorrent’s Main Domain Name Shut Down By Registrar
uri: ExtraTorrent-s-Main-Domain-Name-Shut-Down-By-Registrar
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/ewWK2aFD7rw/
content:
<p><img src="media/7d9eb520.extratorrent-1.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/extratorrent-1.png" alt="extratorrent" width="250" height="76" class="alignright size-full wp-image-130488">With millions of daily visitors ExtraTorrent is the second largest torrent site, trailing only behind The Pirate Bay. </p>
<p>The site&#8217;s popularity puts it in the crosshairs of various entertainment industry groups, who put pressure on hosting companies and domain name services to take action. </p>
<p>As a result, ExtraTorrent has now lost control over it primary domain ExtraTorrent.cc. Since this morning the site&#8217;s domain has become unreachable around the world, and a whois search reveals that this is due to a “clienthold” status.</p>
<p>This status is set by the domain registrar, Internet BS in this case, and informs the registry not to activate the DNS. As a result, the website in question will be inaccessible. </p>
<p><center><strong>ExtraTorrent.cc Whois</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/639f1f92.ETclienthold.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/ETclienthold.png" alt="" width="553" height="249" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-135910"></center></p>
<p>We have seen this status on suspended domains before. According to ICANN the clienthold tag is uncommon and “usually enacted during legal disputes, non-payment, or when your domain is subject to deletion.”</p>
<p>TorrentFreak reached out to the registrar Internet BS for a comment on the situation, but the company informed us that they can&#8217;t reveal any information regarding the domains of their customers to a third party. </p>
<p>It&#8217;s likely, however, that the company suspended the domain after complaints from copyright holders. Internet BS <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/registrar-suspends-torrent-domain-for-dmca-non-compliance-140614/?utm_source=dlvr.it&#038;utm_medium=twitter">previously disconnected </a>the domain of another torrent site, BitTorrent.pm, fearing that it could be held liable for facilitating copyright infringement.</p>
<p>While ExtraTorrent has now lost its primary domain name, the site is still available through various backup domains such as Extra.to. The site’s operator hasn&#8217;t yet responded to our request for comment, but it&#8217;s likely that the site will pick an official new domain in the near future.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135550
title: Private Anti-Piracy Deals With Domain Registries are Dangerous, Professor Warns
uri: Private-Anti-Piracy-Deals-With-Domain-Registries-are-Dangerous-Profes
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/LFFQi_gSnbo/
content:
<p><img src="media/df753675.http-link-hyperlink.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/http-link-hyperlink.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="198" class="alignright size-full wp-image-120483">In recent years various entertainment industry groups have switched their efforts away from legislation, towards voluntary cooperation with various stakeholders.</p>
<p>This has resulted in several agreements with Internet providers, advertising agencies and payment processors, which are all designed to help prevent piracy.</p>
<p>In 2016, this strategy was expanded to cover key players in the domain name industry. Last February, the MPAA and the Donuts registry signed a <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/inside-the-mpaas-piracy-deal-with-the-donuts-domain-registry-160210/">landmark agreement</a> under which the movie industry group acts as a “trusted notifier” of “pirate” domains. A similar deal was later announced <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-signs-anti-piracy-deal-with-large-domain-registry-160413/">with Radix</a>.</p>
<p>Traditionally, it has been very hard for rightsholders to get domain names suspended without a court order but through voluntary agreements, this process is simplified. Without a court order, the registries in question are now able to take pirate sites offline, if the evidence is sufficient. </p>
<p>Such agreements are praised by Hollywood and even have ICANN&#8217;s blessing. However, there are also concerns. In a recent article, University of Idaho Law Professor Annemarie Bridy expresses concern over these developments.</p>
<p>It is the first voluntary deal that touches on the Internet’s core technical functions, assigning private copyright enforcers as some sort of online police. The current agreements are fairly limited and Professor Bridy warns that it could be just the beginning.</p>
<p>&#8220;For now, non-judicial notice and takedown practices in the DNS are limited; however, demands on intermediaries for stronger online content regulation across the board are only growing,&#8221; Bridy <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2920805">writes</a>.</p>
<p>With a lack of transparency and due process, the MPAA’s programs could easily expand to a broader range of controversial content such as fake news, hate speech, and terrorist propaganda, she warns. </p>
<p>&#8220;Lack of transparency and due process in such programs will make them inherently vulnerable to inconsistency, mistake, and abuse and could transform the DNS into a potent tool for suppressing disfavored speech.&#8221;</p>
<p>In copyright cases there are worrying consequences as well. Recent history has shown that over-blocking is a legitimate threat. Professor Bridy highlights the FBI&#8217;s seizure of the domain name MOOO.COM as an example, which took down 84,000 subdomains even though only ten were problematic.</p>
<p>ICANN, the non-profit body responsible for the smooth-running of the Internet’s Doman Name System, has always insisted that copyright disputes are <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/icann-we-wont-pass-judgment-on-pirate-sites-160702/">beyond their mission</a>. As such, it was happy to see registries and rightsholders coming to an agreement.</p>
<p>According to Bridy, however, ICANN is now giving the green light to private agreements that allow corporate and government parties to interfere with DNS without central oversight. That&#8217;s a very worrying development, in her book. </p>
<p>&#8220;[I]n creating that architecture, ICANN did nothing to secure any procedural protections or uniform substantive standards for domain name registrants who find themselves subject to this new form of DNS regulation,&#8221; Bridy writes.</p>
<p>&#8220;That omission should be a red flag for those who worry that ICANN’s newly minted independence from the U.S. government will make its internal governance more susceptible to capture by powerful commercial and governmental interests.&#8221;</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see where the private deals go from here and if they indeed move beyond copyright enforcement. </p>
<p>Last week the Donuts registry said that fears about a “slippery slope” toward inappropriate content control is <a href="http://www.donuts.domains/donuts-media/blog/the-trusted-notifier-program-summary-of-one-year-of-mpaa-referrals">unwarranted</a>. Thus far they are correct by stressing that only a few domain names have been suspended under their deal, but that offers no guarantees for the future.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135769
title: Not Warning Kid About Piracy Makes Father Liable, Court Rules
uri: Not-Warning-Kid-About-Piracy-Makes-Father-Liable-Court-Rules
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/01ciMvTL7Ew/
content:
<p><img src="media/b9037aa7.crypirate.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/crypirate.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="274" class="alignright size-full wp-image-120440">Over the past decade, copyright holders have <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/lawyers-sent-109000-piracy-threats-in-germany-during-2013-140304/">gone after</a> hundreds of thousands of alleged pirates in Germany, demanding settlements ranging from a few hundred to thousands of euros.</p>
<p>The targeted account holder is sometimes the perpetrator, but it could also be another member of the household or even a complete stranger, if the Wi-Fi network is unsecured.</p>
<p>In a case before a Leipzig court the defendant denied having downloaded an audiobook, as he wasn&#8217;t home at the time of the infringement. His wife and 11-year-old son were, and as the case progressed it became clear that the latter was the offender. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, in a rather unique verdict the court decided to <a href="https://tarnkappe.info/filesharing-eltern-haften-fuer-ihre-kinder/">hold the father liable</a>. Although it&#8217;s not uncommon for parents to be held responsible for the actions of their children, the court specifically referenced a lack of anti-piracy education.</p>
<p>In his defense, the father argued that he&#8217;d asked his son to keep any Internet activity limited to school purposes, a statement that was backed up by the man&#8217;s partner. In addition, the 11-year-old was warned not to download random things or do anything dangerous.</p>
<p>However, according to the court&#8217;s verdict, this doesn&#8217;t count as an adequate instruction since it lacks a specific explanation as to what illegal downloads are.</p>
<p>In her order the judge writes that for proper parental supervision, it&#8217;s required to &#8220;instruct a child on the illegality of participating in illegal file-sharing exchanges, and to explicitly prohibit this behavior.&#8221;</p>
<p>The court characterizes the father&#8217;s behavior as &#8220;negligent&#8221; and doesn&#8217;t rule out the possibility that the instruction to limit the son&#8217;s Internet to school purposes, was made up to avoid punishment.</p>
<p>As a result, the man was found guilty and must now pay 956 euros in damages and legal costs. He still has an option to appeal the case at a higher court. </p>
<p>The copyright holder, who&#8217;s not named in the redacted <a href="media/7c36b152.AG_Leipzig_104_7366_16.pdf" data-original-source="http://news.waldorf-frommer.de/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/AG_Leipzig_104_7366_16.pdf">verdict (pdf)</a>, was <a href="http://news.waldorf-frommer.de/waldorf-frommer-ag-leipzig-verurteilung-eines-anschlussinhabers-in-tauschboersenverfahren-aufgrund-fehlender-belehrung-des-minderjaehrigen-taeters/">represented</a> by the German lawfirm Waldorf Frommer, who are widely known for pursuing file-sharers around the country.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135958
title: UK Police Claim 64% Drop in Mainstream Advertising on 200 Pirate Sites
uri: UK-Police-Claim-64-Drop-in-Mainstream-Advertising-on-200-Pirate-Sites
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/ti9qW_nUmCM/
content:
<p><a href="media/57ab39a0.city-pipcu.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/city-pipcu.png"><img src="media/7d486e43.city-pipcu.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/city-pipcu.png" alt="" width="270" height="113" class="alignright size-full wp-image-133985"></a>For the past several years, authorities in the UK have been clamping down pretty hard on Internet piracy. Officers have arrested dozens of individuals involved in running sites and those supplying piracy-enabled hardware.</p>
<p>Much of this action has emanated from the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) under the banner Operation Creative, a multi-pronged initiative to reduce piracy using a variety of tactics, including the targeting of domains and the disruption of <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/torrent-sites-6-million-ad-revenue-140219/">revenue streams</a>.</p>
<p>Part of that task has involved making it harder for pirate site operators to generate funding from advertising. That&#8217;s being achieved via the Infringing Website List (<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/city-of-london-police-launches-pirate-site-blacklist-for-advertisers-140331/">IWL</a>), a blacklist of websites distributed to potential advertisers and agencies who are asked to boycott the domains in the name of supporting creators.</p>
<p>In an announcement yesterday PIPCU claimed success in this area, noting that research from data company whiteBULLET indicates that there has been a 64% decrease in advertising from the UK’s top ad spending companies on more than 200 copyright-infringing websites. </p>
<p>“This shows the great impact our work has on protecting the creative industries in the UK and across the world,&#8221; said DCI Pete Ratcliffe, head of the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit.</p>
<p>“Operation Creative is about taking away the revenue that these criminals use to undermine one of the most important industries to the UK economy.&#8221; </p>
<p>Noting the cooperation shown by brands and advertisers, Ratcliffe said that Operation Creative will be stepping on the gas even more this year, with the aim of negatively affecting close to 1,300 sites on the IWL. </p>
<p>Jo Johnson MP, Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, said that illegal sites have a negative impact on the UK&#8217;s creative industries and that when advertising appears on them, it legitimises criminal operations.</p>
<p>“The naming and shaming of infringing websites sends a clear message: criminal activity will not be tolerated. PIPCU and their enforcement partners will continue to track down, de-legitimise and disrupt advertising revenues on these infringing sites,&#8221; Johnson said.</p>
<p>“I commend PIPCU and their partners for these continued efforts to disrupt funding of illegal streaming sites by dramatically reducing rates of advertising that appear on them.”</p>
<p>The news comes on the heels of a report in January that PIPCU had <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/advertisers-promise-boycott-pirate-sites-police-visit-170113/">paid visits</a> to several companies that had been found to be advertising on pirate sites. Each reportedly pledged to stop advertising on 1,232 pirate sites in the wake of the contact from PIPCU.</p>
<p>PIPCU says that the figure of 64 per cent reported yesterday was based on comparing 205 websites on the Infringing Website List in both January 2016 and January 2017. However, the unit does not release information on which sites were counted (such as their names or their size) so it&#8217;s impossible to say whether these were big or small players or what the overall effect was. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135861
title: Demonoid is Still Down, But Not Out
uri: Demonoid-is-Still-Down-But-Not-Out
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/KNstnPb151E/
content:
<p><a href="media/bfffa813.demonoid-logo.jpg" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/demonoid-logo.jpg"><img src="media/6c7a4ac9.demonoid-logo.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/demonoid-logo.jpg" alt="demonoid-logo" width="200" height="157" class="alignright size-full wp-image-94766"></a>As one of the oldest torrent communities around, Demonoid has run into quite a few rough patches over the years. </p>
<p>Whether it&#8217;s media industry pressure, lawsuits, blocking orders, hosting problems or police investigations, Demonoid has seen it all. </p>
<p>The site has established a reputation as the &#8220;<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/demonoid-back-140330/">comeback kid</a>,&#8221; due to its tendency to go offline for weeks or even months, and then reappear in full glory as if nothing ever happened. </p>
<p>Over the past weeks, the site has been on a downswing once again. Late January the site <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/demonoid-suffers-extended-downtime-due-hosting-issue-170126/">went down</a> due to hosting problems and it has remained offline since. While a server migration can take some time, well over a month is quite unusual.</p>
<p>TorrentFreak contacted Demonoid through the official Twitter account and spoke to someone who identified himself as &#8220;Deimos,&#8221; the site&#8217;s original founder. </p>
<p>He informed us that there are some internal issues that caused a problem. According to Deimos, there was some disagreement with the person who handled most of the technical aspects of the operation.</p>
<p>Over the past several weeks both parties tried to come to an agreement but without result, meaning that Deimos has decided to take back control. New hardware is on the way and he hopes that the site will be back online in the near future.</p>
<p>&#8220;I hoped things worked out with the person in question, but this doesn&#8217;t appear to be an option. So, we ordered some new servers and we are waiting for the arrival, initial setup and whatnot,&#8221; Deimos says.</p>
<p>&#8220;I gave control to the wrong guys while the problems started, but it&#8217;s time to control stuff again.&#8221;</p>
<p>When the site returns it will still be hosted on the recent <a href="http://www.dnoid.me/">Dnoid.me</a> domain. All user data is safe and intact as well, so the site will make a full comeback just as it has done before. </p>
<p>For now, Demonoid users have no other option than to wait until the site returns. For some, this is easier said than done. While the current Demonoid community is a bit smaller than it was at its height, it&#8217;s still a prime location for users who are sharing more obscure content that’s hard to find on public sites. </p>
<p>But then again, Demonoid users are not new to long downtime stretches.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135423
title: Which VPN Services Keep You Anonymous in 2017?
uri: Which-VPN-Services-Keep-You-Anonymous-in-2017
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/2RzMrLXp4CA/
content:
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-135982" src="media/9b13b8a6.privacy.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/privacy.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="170">Millions of Internet users around the world use a VPN to protect their privacy online.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, however, not all VPN services are as private as you might think. In fact, some are <a href="http://blog.hidemyass.com/2011/09/23/lulzsec-fiasco/">known to keep extensive logs</a> that can easily identify specific users on their network.</p>
<p>This is the main reason why we have launched a yearly VPN review, asking providers about their respective logging policies as well as other security and privacy aspects. This year&#8217;s questions are as follows:</p>
<p><em>1. Do you keep ANY logs which would allow you to match an IP-address and a time stamp to a user/users of your service? If so, what information do you hold and for how long?</p>
<p>2. What is the registered name of the company and under what jurisdiction(s) does it operate?</p>
<p>3. Do you use any external visitor tracking, email providers or support tools that hold information about your users/visitors?</p>
<p>4. In the event you receive a takedown notice (DMCA or other), how are these handled?</p>
<p>5. What steps are taken when a valid court order or subpoena requires your company to identify an active user of your service? Has this ever happened?</p>
<p>6. Is BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic allowed (and treated equally to other traffic) on all servers? If not, why?</p>
<p>7. Which payment systems do you use and how are these linked to individual user accounts?</p>
<p>8. What is the most secure VPN connection and encryption algorithm you would recommend to your users?</p>
<p>9. How do you currently handle IPv6 connections and potential IPv6 leaks? Do you provide DNS leak protection and tools such as “kill switches” if a connection drops?</p>
<p>10. Do you offer a custom VPN application to your users? If so, for which platforms?</p>
<p>11. Do you have physical control over your VPN servers and network or are they hosted by/accessible to a third party? Do you use your own DNS servers?</p>
<p>12. What countries are your servers located in?</em></p>
<p>—</p>
<p>Below is the list of responses from the VPN services in their own words. Providers who didn’t answer our questions directly or failed by logging extensively were excluded. We specifically chose to leave room for detailed answers where needed. The order of the list holds no value.</p>
<h2><a name="pia"></a><a href="https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/">Private Internet Access</a></h2>
<p><a href="media/d2a1e068.pia.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/pia.png"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-41039" title="torrentprivacy" src="media/d2a1e068.pia.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/pia.png" alt="VPN review" width="180" height="40"></a>1. We do not store any logs relating to traffic, session, DNS or metadata. There are no logs for any person or entity to match an IP address and a timestamp to a user of our service. In other words, we do not log, period. Privacy is our policy.</p>
<p>2. Private Internet Access is operated by London Trust Media, Inc., with branches in the US and Iceland, which are a few of the countries that still respect privacy and do not have a mandatory data retention policy. Additionally, since we operate from the countries with the strongest of consumer protection laws, our beloved customers are able to purchase with confidence.</p>
<p>3. All of our VPN systems and tools are proprietary and maintained in house. We utilize some third-party tools in order to provide a better customer experience. By Q3 2017, all of these third party tools will be transitioned to in-house solutions.</p>
<p>4. We do not monitor our users, and we keep no logs, period. That said, we have an active, proprietary system in place to help mitigate abuse.</p>
<p>5. Every subpoena is scrutinized to the highest extent for compliance with both the “spirit” and “letter of the law.” While we have not received valid court orders, we periodically receive subpoenas from law enforcement agencies that we scrutinize for compliance and respond accordingly. This is all driven based upon our commitment to privacy. All this being said, we do not log and do not have any data on our customers other than their signup e-mail and account username.</p>
<p>6. BitTorrent and file-sharing traffic are allowed and treated equally to all other traffic (although it&#8217;s <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/pia-runs-vpn-through-vpn-to-avoid-bittorrent-ban-151101/">routed through a second VPN</a> in some cases). We do not censor our traffic, period.</p>
<p>7. We utilize a variety of payment systems, including, but not limited to: PayPal, Credit Card (with Stripe), Amazon, Google, Bitcoin, CashU, and any major store-bought gift card and OKPay. Payment data is not linked nor linkable to user activity.</p>
<p>8. Currently, the most secure and practical encryption algorithm that we recommend to our users would be our cipher suite of AES-256 + RSA4096 + SHA256.</p>
<p>9. Yes, our users gain a plethora of additional protections, including but not limited to:</p>
<p>(a) Kill Switch: Ensures that traffic is routed through the VPN such that if the VPN connection is unexpectedly terminated, the traffic will not route.<br>
(b) IPv6 Leak Protection: Protects clients from websites which may include IPv6 embeds, which could lead to IPv6 IP information coming out.<br>
(c) DNS Leak Protection: This is built-in and ensures that DNS requests are made through the VPN on a safe, private, no-log DNS daemon.<br>
(d) Shared IP System: We mix clients’ traffic with many other clients’ traffic through the use of an anonymous shared-IP system ensuring that our users blend in with the crowd.<br>
(e) MACE™: Protects users from malware, trackers, and ads</p>
<p>10. We have custom applications to which our users have left amazing reviews. PIA has clients for the following platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, iOS and a Chrome Extension (Coming soon). Additionally, users of other operating systems can connect with other protocols including OpenVPN, SOCKS5 (unencrypted), and IPSec, among others.</p>
<p>11. We utilize our own bare metal servers in third-party datacenters that are operated by trusted friends and, now, business partners whom we have met and on which we have completed serious due diligence. Our servers are located in facilities including 100TB, Choopa, Leaseweb, among others.</p>
<p>We also operate our own DNS servers on our high throughput network. These servers are private and do not log.</p>
<p>12. As of the beginning of 2017, We operate 3283 servers across 37 locations in 25 countries. For more information on what countries are available, please visit our <a href="https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/network/">network information page</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/">Private Internet Access website</a></p>
<h2><a name="expressvpn"></a> <a href="https://www.expressvpn.com/">ExpressVPN</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-123282" src="media/524f4f75.expressvpnlogo.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/expressvpnlogo.png" alt="expressvpnlogo" width="180" height="53">1. ExpressVPN is an anonymous, offshore, zero-log VPN service provider. We are in the business of keeping our customers private and secure.</p>
<p>We do not possess information that would enable us to identify a user by an IP and timestamp produced as part of an investigation. ExpressVPN IPs are shared among customers, and we don&#8217;t have the ability to match a customer to an IP address. We designed our network to maximize privacy protection for our customers.</p>
<p>2. Express VPN International Ltd. is a BVI (British Virgin Islands) company. The BVI is a small, independent nation in the Caribbean renowned as an offshore jurisdiction with strict privacy regulations and no data retention laws.</p>
<p>3. We use 3rd party website analytics tools such as Google Analytics. We use Zendesk for support tickets and Snapengage for live chat. We believe that these are secure platforms.</p>
<p>Information about how you use the VPN itself (such as browsing history, traffic data or DNS queries) is never revealed to 3rd parties and is never logged or stored by ExpressVPN.</p>
<p>4. As we are a network service provider rather than a content host, there is nothing to take down. We also do not attempt to identify an ExpressVPN user in this case, report the user, or otherwise restrict service. Our customers should rest assured that their anonymity is protected.</p>
<p>5. VPN companies receive subpoenas and other legal requests as a matter of regular occurrence. This is one of the most significant advantages of our BVI jurisdiction. A court order would need to take place in the BVI for it to be legally valid. If we receive a request from another jurisdiction, we let them know that we don’t maintain logs that would enable us to match an IP address to an ExpressVPN user.</p>
<p>6. ExpressVPN allows all traffic including BitTorrent from all VPN servers and does not impose restrictions based on the type of traffic our users send.</p>
<p>7. ExpressVPN accepts all major credit cards including VISA, MasterCard and American Express. We also accept PayPal and a large number of local payment options. For users who want maximum privacy and don&#8217;t want to send us personally identifying payment information, we recommend bitcoin. In fact, we&#8217;ve written a complete guide to protecting your financial privacy with bitcoin.</p>
<p>8. In most cases we recommend (and default to) OpenVPN UDP. Our apps use a 4096-bit CA, AES-256-CBC encryption, TLSv1.2, and SHA512 signatures to authenticate our servers.</p>
<p>9. Yes, we call this leak protection feature “Network Lock”, and it is turned on by default. Network Lock prevents all types of traffic including IPv4, IPv6, and DNS from leaking outside of the VPN, such as when your Internet connection drops or in various additional scenarios where other VPNs might leak.</p>
<p>10. ExpressVPN has award-winning apps for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux, and routers. Our apps are designed to make it easy for users to choose a VPN location and get connected. They also offer much better security and privacy protection than manually configuring a VPN. With the ExpressVPN App for Routers, we make it easy to protect every device in your home using a VPN that is always connected.</p>
<p>11. Our VPN servers are hosted by trusted data centers with strong security practices. The data center employees do not have server credentials, and the server disks are fully encrypted to mitigate any risks from physical seizure. We run our own zero-knowledge DNS on every server (no 3rd party DNS).</p>
<p>12. ExpressVPN has thousands of high speed servers in 145 locations across 94 countries. See the full list <a href="https://www.expressvpn.com/vpn-server?a_aid=home">here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.expressvpn.com/">ExpressVPN website</a></p>
<h2><a name="nordvpn"></a></h2>
<h2><a href="https://nordvpn.com/">NordVPN</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-118226" src="media/daf4bb6e.nordv.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/nordv.jpg" alt="nordv" width="180" height="40">1. As stated in our terms of service, we do not monitor, record or store any VPN user logs. We do not store connection time stamps, used bandwidth, traffic logs, or IP addresses.</p>
<p>2. The registered company name is Tefincom co S.A., and it operates under the jurisdiction of Panama.</p>
<p>3. We use Google Analytics and a third-party ticket/live chat tools (Zendesk/Zopim). Google Analytics is used to improve our website and provide our users with the most relevant information. The ticket/live chat tool is used to provide the best support in the industry (available 24/7), but not tracking our users by any means.</p>
<p>4. We operate under Panama’s jurisdiction, where DMCA and similar orders have no legal bearing. Therefore, they do not apply to us.</p>
<p>5. If the order or subpoena is issued by a Panamanian court, we would have to provide the information if we had any. However, our zero-log policy means that we don’t have any information about our users’ online activity. So far, we haven’t had any such cases.</p>
<p>6. Yes, we allow P2P traffic. We have optimized a number of our servers specifically for file-sharing; ensuring other servers, which are meant for streaming and other purposes, have uninterrupted speeds. In any case, we do not engage in bandwidth throttling for P2P users.</p>
<p>7. Our customers can pay via credit card, PayPal and Bitcoin. We do store the standard billing information for refund purposes, but it can not be related to any Internet activity of a particular customer. Bitcoin is the most anonymous option, as we do not link the payment details with the user identity or other personal information.</p>
<p>8. NordVPN uses NGE (Next Generation Encryption) in IKEv2/IPsec. The ciphers used to generate Phase1 keys are AES-256-GCM for encryption, coupled with SHA2-384 to ensure integrity, combined with PFS (Perfect Forward Secrecy) using 3072-bit Diffie Hellmann keys. IKEv2 protocol is used by default in our OS X and iOS apps, and it can be manually setup on Windows and Android OS. We are also exploring possibilities to develop IKEv2 based apps for Android and Windows. At the moment, Windows and Android apps are using AES-256-CBC encryption with 2048-bit key.</p>
<p>9. Yes, we do provide both an automatic app-level kill switch and a feature for DNS leak protection. Our OS X, Windows, iOS and Android apps have IPv6 leak protection implemented. NordVPN service will not leak IPv6 address.</p>
<p>10. We have custom VPN applications for Windows, MacOS, Android, and iOS. All NordVPN apps are very easy to install and use, even with no previous experience with VPN services.</p>
<p>11. We use a hybrid model, whereby we control some of our servers but also partner with premium data centers with strong security practices. Furthermore, due to our special server configuration, no one can retain or collect any data. All servers have been set up with a zero logs policy. We do have specific requirements for network providers to ensure highest service quality for our customers. We do have our own DNS servers, and all DNS requests go through those.</p>
<p>12. At the moment, we have 741 servers in 58 countries. You can find the full list <a href="https://nordvpn.com/servers/">here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/review/nordvpn-reviews/">NordVPN user reviews</a></p>
<h2><a name="torguard"></a><a href="https://torguard.net/">TorGuard</a></h2>
<p><a href="media/b1060a22.torguard.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/torguard.png"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-50163" title="torguard" src="media/b1060a22.torguard.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/torguard.png" alt="VPN review" width="180" height="59"></a>1. No logs or time stamps are kept whatsoever. TorGuard does not store any traffic logs or user session data on our network. In addition to a strict no-logging policy we run a shared IP configuration across all servers. Because there are no logs kept and multiple users share a single IP address, it is not possible to match any user with an IP and time stamp.</p>
<p>2. TorGuard is owned and operated by VPNetworks LLC under US jurisdiction, with our parent company VPNetworks LTD, LLC based in Nevis.</p>
<p>3. We use anonymized Google Analytics data to optimize our website and Sendgrid for transactional email. TorGuard’s 24/7 live chat services are provided through Livechatinc’s platform. Customer support desk requests are maintained by TorGuard’s own private ticketing system.</p>
<p>4. In the event a valid DMCA notice is received it is immediately processed by our abuse team. Due to our no log and no time stamp policy and shared IP network &#8211; we are unable to forward any requests to a single user.</p>
<p>5. If a court order is received, it is first handled by our legal team and examined for validity in our jurisdiction. Should it be deemed valid, our legal representation would be forced to further explain the nature of our network and shared IP configuration and the fact that we do not hold any identifying logs or time stamps to pinpoint any specific user. We have never been able to identify any active user from an IP and time stamp.</p>
<p>6. Yes, BitTorrent and all P2P traffic is allowed. By default we do not block or limit any types of traffic across our network.</p>
<p>7. We currently offer over 200 different payment options. This includes all forms of credit card, PayPal, Bitcoin, altcoins (e.g. Ether, litecoin + more), Alipay, UnionPay, CashU, 100+ Gift Card brands, and many other methods local payment options. No user can be linked back to a billing account because we maintain zero logs across our network.</p>
<p>8. For best security, we advise clients to use OpenVPN and select the cipher option AES-256-CBC, with 4096bit RSA and SHA512 HMAC. We use TLS 1.2 on all servers with perfect forward secrecy enabled. For faster speeds and “obfuscated” Stealth VPN access, we suggest using OpenConnect SSL VPN with cipher option AES-256-GCM. TorGuard offers a wide range of VPN protocols, including OpenVPN, L2TP, IPsec, SSTP, OpenConnect/AnyConnect (SSL VPN), and iKEV2 &#8211; we still offer PPTP for those of you who need it, but we don’t recommend it.</p>
<p>9. TorGuard’s VPN software provides strict security features by automatically disabling IPv6 and blocking any potential DNS or WebRTC leaks. We offer a full connection kill switch that safeguards your VPN traffic against accidental disconnects and can hard kill your interfaces if needed, and an application kill switch that can terminate specific apps if the VPN connection is interrupted for additional safety. All recommended security features are enabled the moment you install TorGuard to ensure by default you have max security while tunneling through our network.</p>
<p>10. TorGuard’s popular VPN client is available for all versions of Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, Android, and iOS. We also offer easy DDWRT and Tomato setup tools for VPN routers, and a Firefox/Chrome SSL proxy app. To stay up to date with current security threats, our VPN software is actively developed and constantly evolving.</p>
<p>11. We retain full physical control over all hardware and only seek partnerships with data centers who can meet our strict security criteria. All servers are deployed and managed exclusively by TorGuard staff. Because there are no logs kept on any TorGuard VPN and Proxy servers, there is no risk of data theft should a machine become seized.</p>
<p>TorGuard VPN apps default to using internal secure no-log DNS servers that run on each VPN endpoint. We suggest this configuration for highest levels of privacy, however, clients can customize their DNS settings and choose from zero log TorGuard public DNS, Google DNS, Level3, or a customized DNS entry of their choosing.</p>
<p>12. TorGuard currently maintains thousands of servers in over 53 countries <a href="https://torguard.net/vpn-network.php">around the world</a>, and we continue to expand the network every month. All customers get full access to our network.</p>
<p><a href="http://torrentfreak.com/review/torguard-review/">TorGuard Reviews</a></p>
<h2><a name="anonymizer"></a><a href="https://anonymizer.com/index.html">Anonymizer</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-124305" src="media/91af616a.anony.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/anony.png" alt="anony" width="200" height="68">1. Anonymizer does not log ANY traffic that traverses our system, ever. We do not maintain any logs that would allow you to match an IP-address and time stamp to a user of our service.</p>
<p>2. Our company is registered as Anonymizer Inc. Anonymizer Inc. operates under U.S. jurisdiction where there are no data retention laws.</p>
<p>3. Anonymizer uses a ticketing system for support but does not request user verification unless it is needed specifically in support of a ticket. Anonymizer uses a bulk email service for email marketing but does not store any details on the individual email address that would connect them to being an existing customer. </p>
<p>Anonymizer uses Google Analytics and Google AdWords to support general marketing to new customers. Both of these tools do not store identifiable information on any unique customer or any way to identify a specific individual as a user of our service. We also actively ensure no link is created from the data in either system to any specific customer following a trial or purchase of our product.</p>
<p>4. Since Anonymizer does not log any traffic that comes over our system, we have nothing to provide in response to DMCA requests. None of our users have ever been issued a DMCA takedown notice or the European equivalent. We’ve been around for over two decades – making us one of the oldest services out there &#8211; and we’ve never turned over information of that kind.</p>
<p>5. Anonymizer Inc. is required by law to respond to all valid court orders and subpoenas. Since we do not log any traffic that comes over our system, we have nothing to provide in response to requests associated with service use. If a user paid by credit card we can only confirm that they purchased access to our service.</p>
<p>There is, and would be, no way to connect a specific user to specific traffic ever. There have been instances where we did receive valid court orders and followed the procedures above. In our 20 years of service, we have never identified details about a customer’s traffic or activities.</p>
<p>6. All traffic is allowed on all of our servers, so long as it complies with our EULA and Terms of Service.</p>
<p>7. Anonymizer Inc. uses a payment processor for our credit card payments. There is a record of the payment for the service and the billing information associated with the credit card confirming the service has been paid for. We also offer a cash payment option. Cash payment options do not store any details.</p>
<p>8. We would recommend OpenVPN for a user that is looking for the most secure connection. We feel it is the most reliable and stable connection protocol currently. Our OpenVPN implementation uses AES-256. We also offer L2TP/IPSEC.</p>
<p>9. Anonymizer’s client software does not support IPv6 connections. All customers are asked to disable IPv6 connections for the application to function. Our client software does have the option to enable a kill switch that prevents any web traffic from exiting your machine without going through the VPN.</p>
<p>10. We offer a custom VPN application for MacOS and Windows. Our default application log only logs fatal errors that occur within the application which prevents the application from running.</p>
<p>11. We own ALL of our hardware and have full physical control of our servers. No third party has access to our environment. We operate our own DNS servers.</p>
<p>12. We have servers in the United States and Netherlands.</p>
<p><a href="https://anonymizer.com/index.html">Anonymizer website</a></p>
<h2><a name="ipredator"></a><a href="https://ipredator.se/">Ipredator</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-135425" src="media/d6bc50ed.ipredator_brand_blue.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/ipredator_brand_blue.png" alt="" width="179" height="32">1. No logs are retained that would allow the correlation of a user’s IP address to a VPN address. The session database does not include the origin IP address of the user. Once a connection has been terminated the session information is deleted from the session database.</p>
<p>2. The name of the company is PrivActually Ltd. which operates out of Cyprus.</p>
<p>3. We do not use any visitor tracking mechanism, not even passive ones analyzing the webserver logs. We run our own mail infrastructure and do not use 3rd party products like Gmail. Neither do we use data hogs like a ticket system to manage support requests. We stick to a simple mail system and delete old data after three months from our mail boxes.</p>
<p>4. The staff forwards DMCA notices to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_Operator_From_Hell">BOFH</a> Notices sent via paper are usually converted into energy by combustion … to power the data center in the basement where the BOFH lives. Digital SPAM^WDMCA notices are looped back into the kernel to increase the VPNs /dev/random devices entropy.</p>
<p>5. We evaluate the request according to the legal frameworks set forth in the jurisdictions we operate in and react accordingly. We had multiple cases where somebody tried but did not succeed to identify active users on the system.</p>
<p>6. Besides filtering SMTP on port 25 we do not impose any restrictions on protocols our users can use on the VPN, quite the contrary. We believe our role is to provide a net-neutral internet access. Every user is free to share his/her/its files. We are conservative people and firmly believe in the heritage of our society, which was built upon the free exchange of cultural knowledge. This new age patent system, and the idea that we need companies who milk creators are simply alien to us.</p>
<p>7. We offer PayPal, Bitcoins, Payza, and Payson fully integrated. OkPay, Transferwise, WU, PerfectMoney, Webmoney, Amazon Giftcards, Cash and Credit Cards on request. An internal transaction ID is used to line payments to their payment processors. We do not store any other data about payments associated with the user&#8217;s account.</p>
<p>8. We provide up to date config files and enforce TLS1.2 for the control channel on all supported systems. For further protection, we provide detailed setup instructions for our users. Besides the public and VPN internal DNS servers we also support DNSCrypt as a means to encrypt DNS requests. Howto&#8217;s for kill switches are available as well. We do not enforce a particular client.</p>
<p>9. Users can connect to a dual stack VPN pool that provides IPv4 as well as IPv6 connectivity. Unfortunately enabling IPv6 for all clients still breaks quite a few setups. Hopefully broader adoption of the OpenVPN 2.4 branch will allow us to work properly. Users can use <a href="https://check.ipredator.se">this page</a> to check for a number of leaks.</p>
<p>Kill switches that provide protection from connection drops are part of the client installation. There is not much we can do against that on the server side. If the user&#8217;s client of choice has built-in support for kill switches, he/she can just use that. If people use the vanilla OpenVPN client, the up/down script hooks provide everything needed to handle custom configs to terminate applications when the VPN connection drops.</p>
<p>DNS and IPv6 leaks are just two issues among many that users face in their quest for online privacy. Most privacy issues cannot be easily fixed by the VPN provider itself, but require knowledge and diligence of the users themselves. We therefore ask our users to go through our interactive <a href="https://ipredator.se/checklist">checklist</a> to improve their online piracy.</p>
<p>10. No, we do not offer a custom VPN application to our users. Users are free to choose which client they want to use. We think that giving users a closed source client is against our core principles.</p>
<p>11. We own our complete setup, network, and data center with everything in it – no 3rd parties are allowed access. We do not trust in 3rd parties operating our core infrastructure.</p>
<p>There are dedicated DNS servers that are given to clients for resolving DNS queries from within the VPN. Furthermore, we encourage users to use DNScrypt or similar technologies. Ideally splitting their DNS queries over multiple DNScrypt instances and running a local resolver to minimize DNS requests in the first place.</p>
<p>12. They are in Sweden due to the laws that allow us to run our service in a privacy-protecting manner. In times where basically everyone in the VPN market is advertising with servers in a gazillion countries, this might seem like a disadvantage. We see this very differently.</p>
<p>The core for any privacy service is trust in the integrity of the underlying infrastructure. Everything else has to build upon that. There is no way we could run such a tight ship and controlled environment with servers all over the world, and we will not compromise on the quality of our setup.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ipredator.se/">Ipredator website</a></p>
<h2><a name="slickvpn"></a><a href="https://www.slickvpn.com/#a_aid=570ec1e3eb913&quot;">SlickVPN</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-135978" src="media/66914728.slick-e1488485082900.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/slick-e1488485082900.png" alt="" width="180" height="104">1. SlickVPN does not log any traffic nor session data of any kind.</p>
<p>2. Slick Networks, Inc. is our recognized corporate name. We operate a complex business structure with multiple layers of Offshore Holding Companies, Subsidiary Holding Companies, and finally some Operating Companies to help protect our interests. The main marketing entity for our business is based in the United States of America and an operational entity is based out of Nevis.</p>
<p>3. We utilize third party email systems to contact clients who opt in for our newsletters and Google Analytics for basic website traffic monitoring and troubleshooting.</p>
<p>4. If a valid DMCA complaint is received while the offending connection is still active, we stop the session and notify the active user of that session. Otherwise, we are unable to act on any complaint as we have no way of tracking down the user. It is important to note that we ALMOST NEVER receive a VALID DMCA complaint while a user is still in an active session.</p>
<p>5. This has never happened in the history of our company. Our customer’s privacy is of top most importance to us. We are required to comply with all valid court orders. We would proceed with the court order with complete transparency, but we have no data to provide any court in any jurisdiction. We would not rule out relocating our businesses to a new jurisdiction if required.</p>
<p>6. Yes, all traffic is allowed.</p>
<p>7. We accept PayPal, Credit Cards, Bitcoin, Cash, and Money Orders. We keep user authentication and billing information on independent platforms. One platform is operated out of the United States of America and the other platform is operated out of Nevis. We offer the ability for the customer to permanently delete their payment information from our servers at any point. All customer data is automatically removed from our records shortly after the customer ceases being a paying member.</p>
<p>8. We recommend using OpenVPN if at all possible (available for Windows, Apple, Linux, iOS, Android) and it uses the AES-256-CBC algorithm for encryption.</p>
<p>9. Our Windows and Mac client disable IPv6 as part of our IP and DNS leak protection. Our IP leak protection proactively keeps your IPv4 and IPv6 traffic from leaking to untrusted networks. Your network will be disabled if you lose the connection to our servers and the only way to restore the network is manual intervention by the user.</p>
<p>10. Yes. Our users are provided with a custom client, designed by our in-house engineers. Currently, the client works with Windows and Mac products. Our client does NOT store logs on customer computers by default. We also provide guides for every other platform.</p>
<p>11. We run a mix. We physically control some of our server locations where we have a heavier load. Other locations are hosted with third parties unless there is enough demand in that location to justify racking our own server setup. To ensure redundancy, we host with multiple providers in each location. We have server locations in over forty countries.</p>
<p>In all cases, our network nodes load over our encrypted network stack and run from ramdisk. Anyone taking control of the server would have no usable data on the disk. We run an algorithm to randomly reboot each server on a regular basis so we can clear the ramdisk. DNS is assigned by the server when a user logs in.</p>
<p>12. At SlickVPN we actually go through the expense of putting a physical server in each country that we list. SlickVPN offers <a href="https://www.slickvpn.com/locations/">service in 40 countries</a> around the world</p>
<p><a href="http://torrentfreak.com/review/slickvpn-reviews/">SlickVPN reviews</a></p>
<h2><a name="mullvad"></a><a href="http://mullvad.net/en">Mullvad</a></h2>
<p><a href="media/032a295b.mullvad.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/mullvad.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-41059" title="mullvad" src="media/032a295b.mullvad.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/mullvad.jpg" alt="VPN review" width="180" height="37"></a>1. No.</p>
<p>2. Amagicom AB, Sweden.</p>
<p>3. We have no external elements at all on our website. We do use external email and encourage people who send us email to use PGP encryption, which is the only effective way to keep email somewhat private. The decrypted content is only available to us.</p>
<p>4. There is no such Swedish law that applies to us.</p>
<p>5. We get requests from governments from time to time. They never get any information about our users. We make sure not to store sensitive information that can be tied to publicly available information so that we have nothing to give out. We believe it is not possible in Swedish law to construct a court order that would compel us to actually give out information about our users. Not that we would anyway. We started this service for political reasons and would rather discontinue it than having it work against its purpose.</p>
<p>6. We do not block or throttle BitTorrent or other file-sharing protocols. All traffic is treated equally.</p>
<p>7. We explain that in more detail <a href="https://mullvad.net/blog/2017/1/13/clarifying-our-no-logging-policy/">here</a>, but we offer Bank Wire, Swish, PayPal (CreditCards), Bitcoin and cash. Cash and Bitcoin are the most anonymous. We run our own full Bitcoin node and don&#8217;t use third parties for any step in the bitcoin payment process, from the generation of QR codes to adding time to accounts.</p>
<p>8. OpenVPN, AES256, handshake encryption RSA-2048.</p>
<p>9. We offer the option to tunnel or not tunnel IPv6 (if not &#8211; IPv6 is blocked), and the kill-switch and DNS leak protection works the same for IPv6 as IPv4. There is both a kill switch in our client and a SOCK5 proxy that is only accessible via our VPN (i.e. if you set your browser to use it, the browser will not work if the VPN is down).</p>
<p>10. Yes: Windows, Mac, Linux</p>
<p>11. We have physical control at four sites. Three in Sweden and one in Amsterdam (I.e. all servers in Sweden and Amsterdam). The rest is hosted by carefully selected providers. Yes, we use our own DNS servers.</p>
<p>12. Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Rep., Denmark, Germany, Lithuania, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, USA</p>
<p>An up to date list is available <a href="https://mullvad.net/guides/our-vpn-servers/">here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://mullvad.net/en">Mullvad website</a></p>
<h2><a name="blackvpn"></a><a href="https://www.blackvpn.com/">BlackVPN</a></h2>
<p><a href="media/67c6712f.blackvpn.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/blackvpn.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-41043" title="blackvpn" src="media/67c6712f.blackvpn.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/blackvpn.jpg" alt="VPN review" width="180" height="61"></a>1. No. We purge all this information when the user disconnects from the VPN.</p>
<p>2. The name of the company is BLACKVPN LIMITED and is registered in Hong Kong and operates under the jurisdiction of Hong Kong.</p>
<p>3. We run our own email server plus support and live chat systems using open source tools. We use StreamSend for sending generic welcome and renewal reminder emails, as well as for the occasional news updates. We have Twitter widgets on our frontpage that may track visitors. We use Google Analytics as well as our own website analytics (Piwik).</p>
<p>4. We block the port on the server listed in the notice.</p>
<p>5. If we received a valid court order from a Hong Kong court, then we would be legally obliged to obey it. So far this has never happened.</p>
<p>6. Bittorrent traffic is not restricted in our Privacy VPN locations, but due to stricter enforcement of DMA notices in the USA and UK we restrict most BitTorrent traffic and only whitelist torrents of open source software.</p>
<p>7. PayPal, Bitcoin and PaymentWall (for Credit Cards and Bank Transfers). The transaction details (ID, time, amount, etc) are linked to each user account.</p>
<p>8. We recommend to use OpenVPN 2.4 and we support the new GCM cipher mode (AES-256-GCM) together with 4096 bit RSA and Diffie Hellman keys. With OpenVPN, we also enforce DHE/ECDHE enabled cipher suites and key exchange is done with Diffie-Hellman, providing forward secrecy.</p>
<p>9. For OpenVPN, we stop IPv6 leaks with the OpenVPN config, and we also disable and blackhole all IPv6 traffic server side. The open source OpenVPN client has DNS leak prevention built in and in most cases will not leak data during reconnections. Our upcoming custom VPN app will be able to provide 100% IPV6 and DNS leak protection client side and will also have a &#8220;kill switch&#8221;.</p>
<p>10. We have a custom open source Android app and we are working on custom Windows/MacOS app aswell. For the moment we build pre-configured versions of the open source OpenVPN clients for Windows and MacOS.</p>
<p>11. We use dedicated servers which are hosted in 3rd party data centers, but they do not have access to login or manage the server. We run our own DNS servers which do not save any logs.</p>
<p>12. USA, UK, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Russia, Spain, Switzerland and Ukraine.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.blackvpn.com/">BlackVPN website</a></p>
<h2><a name="vpnarea"></a> <a href="http://vpnarea.com/">VPNArea</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-124690" src="media/8bba5ef5.vpnarea.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/vpnarea.png" alt="vpnarea" width="180" height="59">1. We do not keep or record any logs. We’re therefore not able to match an IP-address and a time stamp to a user of our service. We also do not keep or record any usage logs.</p>
<p>2. The registered name of our company is “Offshore Security EOOD” (spelled “ОФШОР СЕКЮРИТИ ЕООД” in Bulgarian). We’re a VAT registered business. We operate under the jurisdiction of Bulgaria.</p>
<p>3. The only external tool we use is Zopim LiveChat. Our email system is hosted on our own servers in Switzerland. We use Email and OsTickets for support which are hosted on our own servers in Switzerland. We also offer Skype as a support option.</p>
<p>4. DMCA notices are not forwarded to our members as we’re unable to identify a responsible user due to not having any logs. We would reply to the DMCA notices explaining that we do not host or hold any copyrighted content ourselves and we’re not able to identify or penalize a user of our service.</p>
<p>5. This has not happened yet. Shall it happen our attorney will examine the validity of the court order in accordance with our jurisdiction, we will then delegate our no logs policy to the appropriate party pointing out that we’re not able to match a user to an IP or timestamp due to not keeping or recording any logs.</p>
<p>6. BitTorrent/P2P is allowed on most of our servers but not all of them. Why not? Some servers that we use are not tolerant to DMCA notices, but some of our members utilize them for other activities not related to Torrenting. That is why we keep them in our network despite the inability to use P2P/torrents on them. Most of our VPN servers and locations do allow torrents and P2P.</p>
<p>7. We accept PayPal, Credit/Debit cards and Webmoney via 3rd party payment processor, Bitcoin, Payza. We do not require personal details to register an account with us. In the case of Bitcoin payments, we do not link users to transactions. In the case of PayPal/Payza/Card payments we link usernames to their transactions so we can process a refund. We do not have recurring payments system.</p>
<p>8. We use AES-256-CBC + RSA2048 + SHA256 cipher on all our VPN servers without exception. We also have Double VPN servers, where for example the traffic goes through Russia and Israel before reaching the final destination.</p>
<p>9. In both our Windows and Mac software we have the optional setting to disable IPv6 connectivity on the computer to prevent IPv6 leaks. We have DNS leak protection as an optional setting in our Windows, Mac and Android apps. We have Killswitch in our Windows and Mac software.</p>
<p>10. We do have custom VPN applications for Windows, Mac, Android. We’ve custom app for iOS too, which servers as a helper tool for &#8220;OpenVPN Connect&#8221;.</p>
<p>11. We work with reliable and established data centers. Nobody but us has virtual access to our servers. The entire logs directories are wiped out and disabled, rendering possible physical brute force access to the servers useless in terms of identifying users.</p>
<p>12. We currently have <a href="https://vpnarea.com/front/home/servers">servers in 65 countries</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://vpnarea.com/">VPNArea website</a></p>
<h2><a name="ipvanish"></a><a href="https://www.ipvanish.com/en/">IPVanish</a></h2>
<p><a href="media/1d1c9f64.ipvarnish.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/ipvarnish.png"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-51008" src="media/9e68bf44.ipvarnish.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/ipvarnish.png" alt="ipvanish" width="152" height="82" srcset="https://torrentfreak.com/images/ipvarnish.png 152w, https://torrentfreak.com/images/ipvarnish-150x82.png 150w" sizes="(max-width: 152px) 100vw, 152px"></a>1. IPVanish is a no log VPN.</p>
<p>2. Mudhook Marketing, Inc. The State of Florida</p>
<p>3. We use basic inbound marketing tools like Google Analytics, but we do not track or store personally identifiable information (PII) from these tools. We also do not track the browsing activities of users who are logged into our VPN service.</p>
<p>4. We do not store, host, stream or provide any content, media, images or files that would be subject to a properly formed takedown notice.</p>
<p>5. First, any request has to be a valid and lawful request before we will even acknowledge the request. If the request is for user data or identification of a subscriber based on an IP address, we inform the agency making the request that we do not keep any logs and we operate in a Jurisdiction that does not require mandatory data retention.</p>
<p>Sometimes, legal agencies or authorities may not be happy with this response. We politely remind them that IPVanish operates within the letter of the law and is a valid and needed service to protect the privacy of its subscribers.</p>
<p>6. Yes, BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic is allowed.</p>
<p>7. Bitcoin, PayPal, and all major credit cards are accepted. Payments and service use are in no way linked.</p>
<p>8. We recommend OpenVPN with 256 bit AES as the most secure VPN connection and encryption algorithm.</p>
<p>9. IPVanish has a Kill Switch feature that terminates all network traffic to prevent any DNS leaks in the event your VPN connection drops. We also have a user-enabled option that automatically changes your IP address randomly at selected time intervals. We currently do not support IPv6. This will be rolled in with an upcoming update. All traffic is forced over IPv4 to prevent IP leaks.</p>
<p>10. We offer a custom VPN application for iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac. IPVanish is also configurable with DD-WRT and Tomato routers (pre-configured routers available), gaming consoles, Ubuntu and Chromebook.</p>
<p>11. We own and have physical control over our entire operational infrastructure, including the servers. Unlike other VPN services, we actually own and operate a global IP network backbone optimized for VPN delivery which insures the fastest speeds of any VPN provider.</p>
<p>12. We have servers in over 60 countries including the US, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada and more. You can view the complete list on our <a href="https://www.ipvanish.com/servers/">VPN servers page</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ipvanish.com/en/">IPVanish website</a></p>
<h2><a name="ivpn"></a><a href="http://www.ivpn.net/">IVPN</a></h2>
<p><a href="media/a656cf52.ivpn.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/ivpn.png"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-85390" src="media/a656cf52.ivpn.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/ivpn.png" alt="ivpn" width="150" height="69"></a>1. No, not doing so is fundamental to any privacy service regardless of the security or policies implemented to protect the log data. In addition, it is not within our interest to do so as it would increase our liability and is not required by the laws of any jurisdiction that IVPN operates in.</p>
<p>2. Privatus Limited, Gibraltar.</p>
<p>3. No. We made a strategic decision from day one that no company or customer data would ever be stored on 3rd party systems. Our customer support software, email, web analytics (Piwik), issue tracker, monitoring servers, code repos, configuration management servers etc all run on our own dedicated servers that we setup, configure and manage. No 3rd parties have access to our servers or data.</p>
<p>4. Our legal department sends a reply stating that we do not store content on our servers and that our VPN servers act only as a conduit for data. In addition, we inform them that we never store the IP addresses of customers connected to our network nor are we legally required to do so.</p>
<p>5. Firstly, this has never happened. However, if asked to identify a customer based on a timestamp and/or IP address then we would reply factually that we do not store this information, so we are unable to provide it. If they provide us with an email address and we are asked for the customer’s identity, then we would reply that we do not store any personal data.</p>
<p>If the company is served with a valid court order that did not breach the Data Protection Act 2004, we could only confirm that an email address was or was not associated with an active account at the time in question.</p>
<p>6. Yes, all file sharing traffic is permitted and treated equally on all servers. We do encourage customers to use non-USA based exit servers for P2P as any company receiving a large number of DMCA notices is exposing themselves to legal action and our upstream providers have threatened to disconnect our servers in the past.</p>
<p>7. We accept Bitcoin, Cash, PayPal and credit cards. When using cash, there is no link to a user account within our system. When using Bitcoin, we store the Bitcoin transaction ID in our system. If you wish to remain anonymous to IVPN you should take the necessary precautions when purchasing Bitcoin. When paying with PayPal or a credit card a token is stored that is used to process recurring payments. This information is deleted immediately when an account is terminated.</p>
<p>8. We provide RSA-4096 / AES-256 with OpenVPN, which we believe is more than secure enough for our customers’ needs. If you are the target of a state level adversary or other such well-funded body you should be far more concerned with increasing your general opsec (e.g. $5 wrench &#8211; https://xkcd.com/538/) than worrying about 2048 vs 4096 bit keys.</p>
<p>9. This is a huge problem for most VPN providers as shown by the comprehensive tests undertaken at <a href="https://vpntesting.info/">VPNtesting.info</a> (IVPN sponsored this project).</p>
<p>The IVPN client offers an advanced VPN firewall that blocks every type of IP leak possible including IPv6, DNS, network failures, WebRTC STUN etc.). It is impossible to any data to leak if a connection drops as the firewall will not deactivate until explicitly instructed to do so. It also has an ‘always on’ mode that will be activated on boot before any process on the computer starts to ensure than no packets are ever able to leak outside of the VPN tunnel, regardless of the connection state of the VPN.</p>
<p>10. Yes, we offer a custom OpenVPN client for Windows and MacOS which includes our advanced VPN firewall that blocks every type of possible IP leak. We have also recently released an iOS app and plan to release an Android version later this year.</p>
<p>11. We use bare metal dedicated servers leased from 3rd party data centers in each country where we have a presence. We install each server using our own custom images and employ full disk encryption to ensure that if a server is ever seized the data is worthless.</p>
<p>We also operate an exclusive multi-hop network allowing customers to choose an entry and exit server in different jurisdictions which would make the task of legally gaining access to servers at the same time significantly more difficult. We run our own network of log free DNS servers that are only accessible to our customers.</p>
<p>12. A full list is available <a href="https://www.ivpn.net/status">here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ivpn.net/">IVPN website</a></p>
<h2><a name="liquidvpn"></a><a href="http://www.liquidvpn.com/">LiquidVPN</a></h2>
<p><a href="media/423e344b.liquid.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/liquid.png"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-85312" src="media/423e344b.liquid.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/liquid.png" alt="liquid" width="160" height="65"></a>1. No we do not store any logs that could be used to match an IP address and timestamp back to a LiquidVPN user.</p>
<p>2. LiquidVPN INC. Cheyenne, Wyoming</p>
<p>3. We use Google Analytics on our front end web site. Everything else is self-hosted.</p>
<p>4. If the data center requires us to answer DMCA complaints, then we let them know that these files are not hosted locally and that because we do not keep logs on user activity it is impossible for us to investigate the DMCA complaint further.</p>
<p>5. No we have not received any court orders. We would have to explain to law enforcement that the only way we could provide information about a user on our network was if they were able to provide us with enough information to identify the user in our system. Basically they would need to provide billing information or the users registered email address.</p>
<p>If they were able to provide this information we would be required to hand over the user&#8217;s email address, registered first name and transactional information. There is no other way to identify a user on our system. We would publish any correspondence from law enforcement to our transparency section on the website and if we were not allowed to do that we would stop updating our Warrant Canary.</p>
<p>6. All file sharing traffic is allowed and given equal priority on any server within our network.</p>
<p>7. For anonymity, we recommend bitcoin which requires a first name and email address only. We accept PayPal which requires a first name and email address. Finally, when a user pays via credit card their address, first name and email address is required.</p>
<p>8. I would recommend users connect to any of our OpenVPN servers because they use 256 Bit AES / Camellia, 4096 Bit RSA keys, they use TLS-DHE-RSA-AES-256-CBC-SHA, SHA2 HMAC digest (SHA512) if they want added privacy we would recommend using IP Modulation which randomly modifies the source public IP address per packet on all of a user’s traffic.</p>
<p>9. IPv6 support is on the roadmap for this year. Until its fully supported IPv6 leaks are blocked via our client. We do provide DNS leak protection and a full on VPN firewall that goes well beyond the protection from a standard VPN killswitch.</p>
<p>10. Our custom applications work for Windows, Mac and Android.</p>
<p>11. All of our VPN servers are bare metal servers that we control. Our servers are not accessible by anyone except us. We do provide private DNS servers and SmartDNS for free. Users can access USA and UK content from any server on our network.</p>
<p>12. We have servers in <a href="https://www.liquidvpn.com/vpn-server-locations/">17 data centers and 11 countries</a> in North America, Europe and Asia.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.liquidvpn.com/">LiquidVPN website</a></p>
<h2><a name="smartvpn"></a></h2>
<h2><a href="https://www.smartvpn.com/en/">SmartVPN</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-118173" src="media/cf087a5e.smartvpn.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/smartvpn.jpg" alt="smartvpn" width="180" height="56"><br>
1. We don&#8217;t have enough space on our servers PoPs to keep logs (True story).</p>
<p>2. The company name is Anonymous SARL and operates under the jurisdiction of the Kingdom of Morocco.</p>
<p>3. We use Google Analytics and Tawk live support.</p>
<p>4. What about ignoring them? Since there is nothing to takedown.</p>
<p>5. This has never happened before, but we won’t be able to cater to their demand as we can’t identify that user within our system.</p>
<p>6. BitTorrent and other P2P protocols are allowed on all our servers.</p>
<p>7. We use BitPay (BitCoins) and PayPal</p>
<p>8. We recommend OpenVPN for Desktop and IKEv2 for Mobile devices. For encryption we use the AES-256-CBC algorithm. DNS leak protection is already enabled however “kill switches” will be available soon.</p>
<p>9. We don&#8217;t provide IPv6 support as of now.</p>
<p>10. We provide a custom VPN application for Mac and Windows-based on OpenVPN, and Mobile apps (Android and iOS) based on IKEv2.</p>
<p>11. We have a mix. Physical control over most of our infrastructure and some exotic locations are hosted by 3rd party partners.</p>
<p>12. A full list is <a href="https://www.smartvpn.com/en/servers">available here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.smartvpn.com/en/">SmartVPN website</a></p>
<h2><a name="privatevpn"></a></h2>
<h2><a href="https://privatevpn.com/">PrivateVPN</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-101901" src="media/9a2ae7cb.privatevpn1.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/privatevpn1.png" alt="privatevpn" width="180" height="55">1. We do not keep ANY logs that allow us or a third party to match an IP address and a time stamp to a user of our service. We highly value the privacy of our customers.</p>
<p>2. Privat Kommunikation Sverige AB and we operate under Swedish jurisdiction.</p>
<p>3. We use a service from Provide Support (ToS) for live support. They do not hold any information about the chat session. From Provide support: Chat conversation transcripts are not stored on Provide Support chat servers. They remain on the chat server for the duration of the chat session, then optionally sent by email according to the user account settings, and then destroyed.</p>
<p>We’re also using Google Analytics and Statcounter for collecting static of how many visitors we have, popular pages and conversion of all ads. This data is used for optimization of the website and advertising.</p>
<p>4. We&#8217;ll say that we don&#8217;t store any logs of our customers’ activity. Privacy and anonymity of our customers are something we really value and due to our non-logging policy, DMCA notices will be ignored.</p>
<p>5. Due to our policy of NOT keeping any logs, there is nothing to provide about users of our service. To clarify, we do not log or have any data on our customer’s activities. We have never received any court order.</p>
<p>6. Yes, we allow Torrent traffic on all servers. All traffic is treated equally and we do not, under any circumstances, throttle our traffic. We buy high-capacity internet traffic so we can meet the demands. On some locations, we use Tier1 IP transit providers for best speed and routing to other peers.</p>
<p>7. PayPal, Stripe and Bitcoin. Every payment has an order number, which is always linked to a user. Otherwise, we would not know who has made a payment. To be clear, no one can link a payment to an IP address you get from our service or online user activity.</p>
<p>8. OpenVPN TUN with AES-256. On top is a 2048-bit DH key</p>
<p>9. For our Windows VPN client, we have a feature called “Connection guard”, which will close a selected program(s) if the connection drops. We have no tools yet for DNS leaks but the best way, which is always 100%, is to change the local DNS on the device to DNS servers we provide. Right now, our developers are working on a new feature that will protect from DNS leaks and a new version of the kill switch. Protection against IPv6 leaks will also be implemented in new VPN application.</p>
<p>10. Yes, we’re offering our own customized VPN application for Windows, iOS (iPhone/iPad), Android and MacOS(OS X) with features that help to protect our customers.</p>
<p>11. We have physical control over our servers and network in Sweden. We’re only using trusted data centers with strong security. Our providers have no access to PrivateVPN&#8217;s servers and most importantly, there are no customer data/activities stored on the VPN servers or on any other system we have.</p>
<p>12. See <a href="https://privatevpn.com/why-privatevpn/server-locations">here</a> and <a href="https://privatevpn.com/serverlist/">here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://privatevpn.com/">PrivateVPN website</a></p>
<h2><a name="cryptostorm"></a><a href="https://cryptostorm.is/">CryptoStorm</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-102256" src="media/31c4cee8.cryptostorm.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/cryptostorm.png" alt="cryptostorm" width="180" height="77"><br>
1. Nope, no logs. We use OpenVPN with logs set to /dev/null, and we&#8217;ve even gone the extra mile by preventing client IPs from appearing in the temporary &#8220;status&#8221; logs using our patch available at <a href="https://cryptostorm.is/noip.diff">https://cryptostorm.is/noip.diff</a>.</p>
<p>2. We’re a decentralized project, with intentional separation of loosely-integrated project components. We own no intellectual property, patents, trademarks, or other such things that would require a corporate entity in which ownership could be enforced by the implied threat of State-backed violence; all our code is published and licensed opensource.</p>
<p>3. No, we don&#8217;t use any external visitor tracking or email providers.</p>
<p>4. Our choice is to reply to any such messages that are not obviously generated by automated (and quite likely illegal) spambots. In our replies, we ask for sufficient forensic data to ascertain whether the allegation has enough merit to warrant any further consideration. We have yet to receive such forensic data in response to such queries, despite many hundreds of such replies over the years.</p>
<p>5. See above. We have never received any valid court orders requesting the identity of a user, but if we ever did receive such a request, it would be impossible for us to comply as we keep no such information.</p>
<p>6. Yes, all traffic is allowed.</p>
<p>7. We accept PayPal and payments using Stripe (includes Bitcoin), although we will manually process any other altcoin if a customer wishes. We don’t have financial information connected in any way to the real-life identity of our network members; our token-based authentication system removes this systemic connection, and thus obviates any temptation to “squeeze” us for private data about network membership.</p>
<p>We quite simply know nothing about anyone using our network, save for the fact that they have a non-expired (SHA512 hash of a) token when they connect. Also, we now process Stripe orders instantly in-browser.</p>
<p>8. We only support one cipher suite on-net. Offering “musical chairs” style cipher suite roulette is bad opsec, bad cryptography, and bad administrative practice. There is no need to support deprecated, weak, or known-broken suites in these network security models; unlike browser-based https/tls, there are no legacy client-side software suites that must be supported. As such, any excuse for deploying weak cipher suites is untenable.</p>
<p>Everyone on Cryptostorm receives equal and full security attention, including those using our free/capped service “Cryptofree.”</p>
<p>There are no “kill switch” tools available today that actually work. We have tested them, and until we have developed tools that pass intensive forensic scrutiny at the NIC level, we will not claim to have such. Several in-house projects are in the works, but none are ready yet for public testing.</p>
<p>We take standard steps to encourage client-side computing environments to route DNS queries through our sessions when connected. However, we cannot control things such as router-based DNS queries, Teredo-based queries that slip out via IPv6, or unscrupulous application-layer queries to DNS resolvers that, while sent in-tunnel, nevertheless may be using arbitrary resolver addressing. Our Windows client attempts to prevent some of this, but it’s currently impossible to do so completely.</p>
<p>We are saddened to see others who claim they have such “magical” tools; getting a “pass” from a handful of “DNS leak” websites is not the same as protecting all DNS query traffic. Those who fail to understand that are in need of remedial work on network architecture.</p>
<p>As we run our own mesh-based system of DNS resolvers, “deepDNS”, we have full and arbitrary control over all levels of DNS resolution presentation to third parties.</p>
<p>9. We only handle IPv4 connections, we are currently looking into IPv6, but that&#8217;s work in progress. Our widget prevents against IPv6 leaks, and we advise our customers on how to prevent leaks on other platforms.</p>
<p>10. We offer an open source application written in Perl (dubbed the “CS widget”), source code available at GitHub. Currently only for Windows, but we are working on porting it to Linux. The application is essentially an OpenVPN GUI with some tweaks here and there to prevent different types of leaks (DNS, IPv6, etc.) and to make connecting as easy as possible. Output from the back end OpenVPN process is shown in the GUI. When you exit the program, that data is forgotten.</p>
<p>11. We deploy nodes in commodity data centers that are themselves stripped of all customer data and thus disposable in the face of any potential attacks that may compromise integrity. We have in the past taken down such nodes based on an alert from onboard systems and offsite, independently maintained remote logs that confirmed a violation was taking place.</p>
<p>It is important to note that such events do not explicitly require us to have physical control of the machine in question: we push nameserver updates, via our HAF (Hostname Assignment Framework) out via redundant, parallel channels to all connected members and by doing so we can take down any node on the network within less than 10 minutes of initial commit.</p>
<p>We have constructed a mesh-topology system of redundant, self-administered secure DNS resolvers which has been collected under the label of “deepDNS”. deepDNS is a full in-house mechanism that prevents any DNS related metadata from being tied to any particular customer. It also allows us to provide other useful features such as transparent .onion, .i2p, .p2p, etc. access. There is also DNSCrypt support on all deepDNS servers to help protect pre-connect DNS queries.</p>
<p>12. Our server list is available <a href="http://uptime.statuscake.com/?TestID=tZj3HbyKm5">here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://cryptostorm.is/">CryptoStorm website</a></p>
<h2><a name="bolehvpn"></a><a href="http://bolehvpn.net/">BolehVPN</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-66056" src="media/3266372e.bolehvpn.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/bolehvpn.jpg" alt="bolehvpn" width="182" height="61">1. We do not keep any logs on our VPN servers that would allow us to do this.</p>
<p>2. BV Internet Services Limited, Seychelles</p>
<p>3. We use Zendesk to deal with support queries and do track referrals from affiliates. We however provide the option to send us PGP encrypted messages via e-mail and also Zendesk. We also do not use Cloudflare. We also have an opt-in only education/blog list that uses Hubspot. For announcements we use our own e-mail system.</p>
<p>4. We generally find providers that are friendly towards such DMCA notices or where it cannot be avoided, we just keep them as Surfing/Streaming servers with P2P disabled. These servers are more for geo-location or general purpose surfing rather than P2P. We at no times give out customer information to handle this.</p>
<p>5. There has been a German police request for certain information in relation to a blackmail incident. Despite it appearing legitimate, we could not assist as we did not have any user logs. We maintain a warrant canary at https://www.bolehvpn.net/canary.txt which we do update once a month or when there is a request for information (even if we have not complied with it).</p>
<p>6. Most servers support P2P except those marked as Surfing-Streaming which are with providers with strict DMCA requirements. All other servers support P2P and are not treated differently from any other traffic.</p>
<p>7. Paypal, Paymentwall, Coinpayments, Paydollar, MolPay and we also accept direct Bitcoin/Dash payments.</p>
<p>8. We recommend OpenVPN and our cloak servers that use AES-256 bit encryption and a XOR patch that obfuscates your traffic as being VPN traffic.</p>
<p>9. We provide IPv6 leakage protection.</p>
<p>10. We have a custom application for Windows and Mac and also a slightly modified version for Android.</p>
<p>11. They are bare metal boxes hosted in various providers. We do use our own DNS servers.</p>
<p>12. Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and USA.</p>
<p><a href="http://bolehvpn.net/">BolehVPN website</a></p>
<h2><a name="azirevpn"></a><a href="https://www.azirevpn.com/">AzireVPN</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-118357" src="media/f9db3f6b.azire-1.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/azire-1.png" alt="azire" width="180" height="61">1. No, we don&#8217;t.</p>
<p>2. The registered name is Netbouncer AB, operating under Swedish jurisdiction.</p>
<p>3. No, we refuse to use 3rd party software. E-mail, ticket system and other<br>
services are hosted in-house on open-source software.</p>
<p>4. We politely inform the sender party that we cannot help them since it is not possible for us to identify the user.</p>
<p>5. This has not happened yet, but in the case a valid court order would be issued, we will inform the other party that is it not possible to identify an active user of our service.</p>
<p>6. Yes, all protocols are allowed.</p>
<p>7. We accept payments through Bitcoin (Bitpay), Paypal, Credit Cards and Swish.</p>
<p>8. We recommend our users to use our default configuration we supply with<br>
OpenVPN 2.4:<br>
&#8211; AES-256-GCM data-channel<br>
&#8211; TLS-ECDHE-RSA-WITH-AES-256-GCM-SHA384 TLS<br>
&#8211; HMAC-SHA512 authentication<br>
&#8211; 4096 bit key size using a Diffie-Hellman key exchange<br>
&#8211; 2048 bit TLS additional auth key<br>
&#8211; 2048 bit TLS additional crypt key</p>
<p>9. We assign IPv6 addresses on all our locations, overriding the local IPv6 assigned to the client. Currently we provide guides to prevent DNS leaks and also for kill switches on some operating systems. Our new client will soon get integrated kill switch, and DNS leak prevention is already in place for some platforms.</p>
<p>10. Yes, we do offer a custom VPN application for all desktop platforms (Windows, MacOS and Linux), with source-code released <a href="https://github.com/azirevpn/azclient">on Github</a>.</p>
<p>11. Yes, we own our hardware, co-located in dedicated racks on different data centers around the globe. We do host our own DNS servers. One thing that is very important for us is the hardware installation on new locations &#8211; we always bring the hardware there on our own, to make sure that it is being installed as per our own guidelines and no kind of foul play by another party can take place. Next step is the start video documenting the process for each new location for full transparency.</p>
<p>12. <a href="https://www.azirevpn.com/docs/infrastructure#network">As of now</a>; Sweden, US, United Kingdom and Spain. With Canada, Moldova and more US locations during 2017&#8217;s <a href="https://www.azirevpn.com/docs/roadmap">roadmap</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.azirevpn.com/">AzireVPN website</a>[/expand]
<h2><a name="vpnbaron"></a> <a href="http://vpnbaron.com/">VPNBaron</a></h2>
<p><a href="media/3b7d62d3.vpnbaron.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/vpnbaron.png" rel="attachment wp-att-102027"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-102027" src="media/f82f2520.vpnbaron.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/vpnbaron.png" alt="vpnbaron" width="180" height="45"></a>1. No, we don’t! No traffic logs are recorded. We monitor only the number of simultaneous user connections on our network as a whole, and do not link the user to a particular server. This helps us avoid infinite simultaneous connections from a single user.</p>
<p>2. Our registered legal name is Hexville SRL. We’re under Romanian jurisdiction, inside of the European Union. EU takes privacy issues more seriously than the US, as many already know.</p>
<p>3. For our sales site analytics, we rely on Google Analytics. Other than that, all our systems and support tools belong to us and are hosted in-house.</p>
<p>4. None of our users ever received a DMCA notice while connected to our service, being unable to detect the source user, due to our no traffic logging policy. On our end, we have an internal procedure of dealing with the DMCA claim that goes unnoticed by our users and of the users’ privacy is not affected.</p>
<p>5. No subpoena has been received by our company. If it will happen, we’ll be sure to assist as much as we’re legally obliged. Keep in mind that we don’t have any information stored about our users, except their login credentials.</p>
<p>6. Yes, it is allowed. We don’t restrict traffic in any way. Net neutrality is king.</p>
<p>7. We use Bitcoins (and many other kinds of virtual currencies), PayPal and Credit Cards. The lack of traffic logs does not allow any linkage between the individual accounts.</p>
<p>8. We take security very seriously at VPNBaron. We use only OpenVPN protocol, one of the most secure and hard to crack protocols, with AES-256-CBC cipher, TLSv1/SSLv3 DHE-RSA-AES512-SHA, 2048 bit RSA.</p>
<p>On top of the OpenVPN, you can also choose one of the two anti DPI (Deep Package Inspection) protocols: “TOR’s OBFSPROXY Scamblesuit” and “SSL” that mask your VPN connection from your ISP. These protocols come handy in places that actively block VPN connections, like China, Egypt or university campuses.</p>
<p>9. There is no difference in user experience regardless of the users’ IP type. Using the OpenVPN protocol, we do not have IPv6 leaks as these issues have been addressed in the latest OpenVPN versions. The same goes for DNS Leaks. OpenVPN has added a setting that deals with DNS leaks.</p>
<p>On top of that, we also provide another DNS Leak protection system that we developed before the protocol was updated and a killswitch feature that disables the network card if there is any risk of the users’ privacy being breached, temporarily disconnected the device from the internet. These settings can be activated or deactivated as the user wishes.</p>
<p>10. We offer a light and easy to use app for windows. For the other platforms we offer automation scripts and visual guides that get the user up and running in no time, regardless of the users’ tech savviness.</p>
<p>11. Our VPN servers have minimal data and do not store any private information. We do not have physical control of the servers, but we have unlimited access. This allows us to offer locations from all over the world.</p>
<p>12. We offer more than 30 servers in 18 countries and we’re expanding fast. You can find the <a href="https://vpnbaron.com/#locations">full list here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://vpnbaron.com/">VPNBaron website</a></p>
<h2><a name="acevpn"></a> <a href="https://acevpn.com/">AceVPN</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-102037" src="media/fbda25d2.ace.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/ace.png" alt="ace" width="180" height="63">1. We do not log, period. We respect our users&#8217; privacy. IPs are shared amongst users and our configuration makes it extremely difficult to single out any user.</p>
<p>2. We are registered in the USA and operate as Acevpn.com and the name of the company is Securenet.</p>
<p>3. We use Google Analytics on www.acevpn.com (marketing site). For emails, we use Google cloud and these are regularly purged.</p>
<p>4. We block the port mentioned in the complaint. IPs are shared by other users and our configuration makes it extremely difficult to single out any user. We do not share or sell any information to 3rd parties.</p>
<p>5. To date, we have not received a court order or subpoena. Our users cannot be identified based on IP address.</p>
<p>6. We have special servers for P2P and are in data centers that allow such traffic. These servers also have additional security to protect privacy when P2P programs are running.</p>
<p>7. We accept Bitcoin, PayPal, and Credit cards for payments. We store billing information on a secure server separate from VPN servers.</p>
<p>8. For higher security needs we suggest using our IPSEC IKEv2 VPN or our OpenVPN with Elliptic Curve Encryption which we are rolling out as we speak. Both these protocols use next gen cryptographic algorithms and AES 256 bit data encryption suitable for top secret communication. Read about our IKEv2 <a href="https://www.acevpn.com/2014/06/03/elliptic-curve-ipsec-ikev2-vpn-next-gen-security/">implementation</a>.</p>
<p>9. We provide kill switches if a connection drops. Our servers are tested for DNS leaks. Our service is currently IPv4 only, so no ipv6 leaks.</p>
<p>10. We use an unmodified OpenVPN client that is signed by the developers. Our users are encouraged to use a VPN client of their choice. We do not offer custom applications at this time.</p>
<p>11. We have full control over our servers. Servers are housed in reputed data centers. Many of them are ISO certified and are designed to the highest specifications for performance, reliability, and security. We operate our own DNS servers (Smart DNS) for streaming videos. For VPN, we use Google and Level3 DNS.</p>
<p>12. We have servers in <a href="https://www.acevpn.com/#locations">26+ countries</a> and over 50+ locations.</p>
<p><a href="https://acevpn.com/">AceVPN website</a></p>
<h2><a name="octanevpn"></a> <a href="https://octanevpn.com/">OctaneVPN</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-85308" src="media/c041b3ba.octane.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/octane.png" alt="octane" width="180" height="52">1. No. Our gateway servers operate out of an encrypted RAM Disk volume that loads remotely on boot. When they are powered down, the RAM Disk is lost.</p>
<p>2. We operate as two separate companies. Octane Networks is a US registered company and handles customer-facing communications. The infrastructure company is a Nevis-based company and manages all the network infrastructure.</p>
<p>3. We use Google Analytics for general website trends. We use Hotjar occasionally for A/B and user experience testing. Support is internal.</p>
<p>4. If we receive a DMCA notice or its equivalent based on activity that occurred in the past, we respond that we do not host any content and have no logs. If we receive a realtime DMCA notice where the customer VPN session is still active when the DMCA notice is processed, we notify the customer if we have sufficient information to do so. No customer data is used to respond to DMCA notices.</p>
<p>5. This has not happened. Our customers&#8217; privacy is a top priority for us. We would handle a court order with complete transparency.</p>
<p>A court order would likely be based on an issue traced to a gateway server IP address and would, therefore, be received by our network operations company which is Nevis based. The validity of court orders from other countries would be difficult to enforce. The network company has no customer data and no log data, so if it were compelled to respond to a court order, our response would likely lack the type of information requested.</p>
<p>Our marketing company is US-based and would respond to an order issued by a court of competent jurisdiction. The marketing company does not have access to any data related to network operations or user activity, so there is not much information that a court order could reveal.</p>
<p>6. P2P is allowed. We operate with net neutrality with the exception of restricting outgoing SMTP to prevent spammers from abusing the service.</p>
<p>7. Bitcoin, Credit/Debit Card, and PayPal. If complete payment anonymity is desired, we suggest using Bitcoin or a gift/disposable credit card. Methods such as PayPal or Credit/Debit card are connected to an account token so that future renewal payments can be properly processed and credited. We allow customers to edit their account information. With our US/Nevis operating structure, customer payment systems information is separate from network operations.</p>
<p>8. We recommend using the AES-256-CBC cipher with OpenVPN, which is used with our client. IPSec is available for native Apple device support and PPTP is offered for other legacy devices, but OpenVPN offers the best security and speed and is our recommended protocol</p>
<p>9. Our client disables IPv6 completely as part of our DNS and IP leak protection in our Windows and Mac OS X OctaneVPN clients. Our OpenVPN based client&#8217;s IP leak protection works by removing all routes except the VPN route from the device when the client has an active VPN connection. This a better option than a &#8216;kill switch&#8217; because our client ensures the VPN is active before it allows any data to leave the device, whereas a &#8216;kill switch&#8217; typically monitors the connection periodically, and, if it detects a drop in the VPN connection, reacts.</p>
<p>With a &#8216;kill switch&#8217;, data sent during the time between checks is potentially vulnerable to a dropped connection. Our system is proactive vs a reactive kill switch.</p>
<p>Customers should be vigilant as other software such as JavaScript, Flash, Java and WebRTC can leak IP independently of their VPN connection. Customers might want to consider creating a profile in their web browser specifically tailored toward web browsing privacy by disabling 3rd party plugins/extensions.</p>
<p>10. Yes, for Windows and Mac OS X. We support a number of protocols and software configurations.</p>
<p>11. In our more active gateway locations, we colocate. In locations with lower utilization, we normally host. All of our network infrastructure is set up so that each gateway boots, creates an encrypted RAM Disk, and authenticates with a central server before loading its configuration over our encrypted network remotely. The individual gateways only have a boot script &#8211; no data or config information is on the individual gateways. If we lost access to a gateway due to a third party action, the encrypted RAM Disk would vanish upon powering down.</p>
<p>12. We have gateways in <a href="http://www.octanevpn.com/server-locations.html">45 countries and 92 cities</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://octanevpn.com/">OctaneVPN website</a></p>
<h2><a name="proxpn"></a> <a href="https://secure.proxpn.com/">proXPN</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-135962" src="media/9b1f0ddc.proxpn.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/proxpn.png" alt="" width="180" height="61">1. We do not log any information about IP usage, in fact in most locations we NAT everything so it is not even possible to be able identify a requester and a user account and a source IP.</p>
<p>2. proXPN B.V. out of the Netherlands</p>
<p>3. We utilize a tracking cookie for affiliate sales that expires in 30 days. We use SendGrid for email which sends out the welcome and support emails, but email information is never shared with another 3rd party.</p>
<p>4. We respond and have internal processes that deal with these requests that do not include or disclose any customer information.</p>
<p>5. We keep no record of how users are mapped to IPs so we have nothing to give.</p>
<p>6. We don’t block, filter or throttle any BitTorrent or file-sharing traffic.</p>
<p>7. Visa, MasterCard, American Express, PayPal and Bitcoin.</p>
<p>8. We currently support IP SEC, OpenVPN and PPTP. IP SEC tends to be the fastest and most reliable, however as it is UDP some locations may restrict access. Open VPN over TCP is also reliable but slower than Open VPN over UDP.</p>
<p>9. We provide DNS leak protection. “VPN Guard” is a kill switch on our desktop application.</p>
<p>10. Yes, we have clients for Windows XP and up, MacOS 10.6 and up, Linux Debian but also works on other flavors such as Ubuntu, and on mobile we support iOS and Android.</p>
<p>11. We run and maintain our own core servers and we also serve our own DNS.</p>
<p>12. USA, Canada, Costa Rica, UK, Iceland, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, China, Romania, Singapore, Australia, France and Japan.</p>
<p><a href="https://secure.proxpn.com/">proXPN website</a></p>
<h2><a name="hideme"></a> <a href="http://hide.me">Hide.me</a></h2>
<p><a href="media/f8c10362.hideme.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/hideme.png"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-85360" src="media/f8c10362.hideme.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/hideme.png" alt="hideme" width="181" height="75"></a>1. No, we don&#8217;t keep any logs. We have developed our system with an eye on our customers’ privacy, so we created a distributed VPN cluster with independent public nodes that do not store any customer data or logs at all. We have also been audited by one of the finest independent security experts, Leon Juranic, who has certified us to be completely log free.</p>
<p>2. Hide.me VPN is operated by eVenture Limited and based in Malaysia with no legal obligation to store any user logs at all.</p>
<p>3. Our landing pages, which are solely used for advertising purposes, include a limited amount of third-party tracking scripts, namely Google Analytics. However, no personal information that could be linked with VPN usage is shared with these providers. We do not send information that could compromise someone’s security over email.</p>
<p>4. Since we don’t store any logs and/or host copyright infringing material on our services, we’ll reply to these notices accordingly.</p>
<p>5. It has never happened but in such a scenario, we won&#8217;t be able to entertain the court orders because our infrastructure is built in a way that it does not store any logs and there is no way we could link any particular cyber activity to any particular user. In case we are forced to store user logs, we would prefer to close down rather than putting our users at risk who have put their trust in us.</p>
<p>6. There is no effective way of blocking file-sharing traffic without monitoring our customers which is against our principles and would be even illegal. Usually we only recommend our customers to avoid the US &amp; UK locations for file-sharing but it is on a self-regulatory basis since these countries have strong anti-copyright laws in place.</p>
<p>7. We support over 200+ international payment methods, including Bitcoin, Paypal, Credit Cards, Bank transfer and UKash. All payments are handled by external payment providers and are linked to a temporary payment ID. This temporary payment ID can not be connected to the user’s VPN account/activity. After the payment is completed, the temporary payment ID will be permanently removed from the database.</p>
<p>8. After all, modern VPN protocols that we all support &#8211; like IKEv2, OpenVPN and SSTP, are considered secure even after the NSA leaks. We follow cryptographic standards and configured our VPN servers accordingly in order to support a secure key exchange with 8192-bit keys and a strong symmetric encryption (AES-256) for the data transfer.</p>
<p>9. Our users’ privacy is of utmost concern to us. Our Windows client has the features such as kill switch, Auto Connect, Auto Reconnect etc which makes sure that the user is always encrypted and anonymous. Even if one of our customers decides not to use the client, in our community there is a big variety of tutorials to help our customers to protect themselves against any sort of leaks.</p>
<p>Above all, we have put in some additional layers of security which include default protection against IP and DNS leaks. To ensure IP leak protection, as soon as the VPN connection is established, our application deletes the default gateway of the user&#8217;s’ Internet Connection so their local network becomes inaccessible. In such an instance you enforce the VPN usage adding another layer of security making IP leaks impossible and that’s not it.</p>
<p>Our Windows app also blocks outgoing IPv6 connections automatically to prevent IP leaks. It won’t affect a user’s overall Internet connectivity if your ISP assigns you an IPv6 address.</p>
<p>10. We have our own VPN application for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS</p>
<p>11. We operate our own non-logging DNS-servers to protect our customers from DNS hijacking and similar attacks. We operate 32 server locations in 27 different countries. However we do not own physical hardware, there is an intrusion detection and other various security measures in place to ensure the integrity and security of all our single servers.</p>
<p>We choose all third party hosting providers very carefully, so we can assure that there are certain security standards in place (ISO 27001) and no unauthorized person could access our servers. Among our reputable partners are Leaseweb, NFOrce, Equinix and Softlayer.</p>
<p>12. Our servers are located in countries all over the world, among the most popular ones are Canada, Netherlands, Singapore, Germany, Brazil, Mexico and Australia. Below is the complete list of countries, alternatively you can view all available locations <a href="https://hide.me/en/network">here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://hide.me">Hide.me website</a></p>
<h2><a name="airvpn"></a><a href="https://airvpn.org/">AirVPN</a></h2>
<p><a href="media/fb6bdebe.airvpn.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/airvpn.png"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-85470" src="media/8e86e5a7.airvpn.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/airvpn.png" alt="airvpn" width="180" height="48"></a>1. No, we don&#8217;t.</p>
<p>2. It is &#8220;AIR&#8221; and it is registered in Italy.</p>
<p>3. No, absolutely not.</p>
<p>4. They are ignored.</p>
<p>5. No court order or magistrate decree has ever been issued to disclose the identity of any of our customers, but we will of course do our best to comply with a valid and jurisdictionally competent magistrate decree or order. However, it must also be said that we can not provide information that we don&#8217;t have. Up to now, no personal information has ever been given away, while data about traffic is not even kept by us (we do not inspect, log or monitor traffic in any case).</p>
<p>6. Yes, it&#8217;s allowed on every and each server. We do not discriminate against any protocol. Our infrastructure is totally agnostic and we do not even monitor traffic to see which protocols are being used.</p>
<p>7. We accept Bitcoin, a wide range of cryptocurrencies, PayPal and major credit cards. About PayPal and credit cards, the usual information pertaining to the transaction and account/credit card holder are retained by the financial institutions, and it is possible to correlate a payment to a user (which is good for refund purposes when required).</p>
<p>When this is unacceptable for security reasons, then Bitcoin or some other cryptocoin should be used. Bitcoin is not anonymous by itself, but it can be provided with a rather good anonymity layer simply by running the Bitcoin client behind Tor. On top of that we also accept some cryptocurrency which offers intrinsically and by default a strong anonymity layer protecting the transactions.</p>
<p>8. We would recommend our setup which includes Perfect Forward Secrecy, 4096 bit RSA keys, 4096 bit Diffie-Hellman keys and authentication on both sides not based on username/password. In general, we would also recommend to be cautious and get well documented before jumping to ECC. Our service setup, based on OpenVPN, is the following:</p>
<p>DATA CHANNEL CIPHERS<br>
AES-256-CBC with HMAC-SHA1 for authentication</p>
<p>CONTROL CHANNEL CIPHERS<br>
AES-256-GCM with HMAC-SHA384 for authentication<br>
AES-256-CBC with HMAC-SHA1 for authentication</p>
<p>4096 bit Diffie-Hellman keys size<br>
TLS Ciphers (IANA names): TLS-DHE-RSA-WITH-AES-256-CBC-SHA, TLS-DHE-RSA-WITH-AES-256-GCM-SHA384<br>
TLS additional authorization layer key: 2048 bit<br>
Perfect Forward Secrecy through Diffie-Hellman key exchange DHE. After the initial key negotiation, re-keying is performed every 60 minutes (this value can be lowered unilaterally by the client)</p>
<p>9 and 10) Our free and open source software &#8220;Eddie&#8221; (released under GPLv3) for GNU/Linux, Windows, OS X and MacOS, implements features which prevent the typical DNS leaks in Windows and any other leak (for example in case of unexpected VPN disconnection). Leaks prevention, called &#8220;Network Lock&#8221;, is not a trivial kill-switch, but it prevents various leaks that a classical kill switch can&#8217;t block: leaks caused by WebRTC, by programs binding to all interfaces on a misconfigured system and by malevolent software which tries to determine the &#8220;real&#8221; IP address.</p>
<p>We block outbound IPv6 packets at the moment on client side (a solution preferred over disabling IPv6, which remains anyway an optional feature). In 2016 we planned IPv6 support for half or late 2017 and at the moment we are fine with this deadline.</p>
<p>We provide guides, based on firewalls and not, to prevent leaks on various systems for all those persons who can&#8217;t or don&#8217;t wish to use our client software Eddie.</p>
<p>11. Our servers are housed in data centers which we have physical access to, provided that the access is arranged well in advance for security reasons. Access to servers is also guaranteed to the data center technicians, for any need of on-site support.</p>
<p>12. We have servers located in several countries. We offer a public real-time servers monitor in one of our <a href="https://airvpn.org/status">web pages</a> which provides a lot of information (including location, of course) for each server.</p>
<p><a href="https://airvpn.org/">AirVPN website</a></p>
<h2><a name="hideipvpn"></a><a href="http://www.hideipvpn.com/">HideIPVPN</a></h2>
<p><a href="media/c4783f6f.hideipvpn.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/hideipvpn.png"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-83070" src="media/c4783f6f.hideipvpn.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/hideipvpn.png" alt="hideipvpn" width="180" height="68"></a>1. We store no logs related to any IP address. There is no way for any third-party to match user IP to any specific activity in the internet.</p>
<p>2. Registered name of the company is Server Management LLC and we operate under US jurisdiction.</p>
<p>3. We use live chat provided by WHMCS and Google Apps for incoming email. For outgoing email we use our own SMTP server.</p>
<p>4. Since no information is stored on any of our servers there is nothing that we can take down. We reply to the data center or copyright holder that we do not log our users&#8217; traffic and we use shared IP-addresses, which make it impossible to track who downloaded/uploaded any data from the internet using our VPN.</p>
<p>5. HideIPVPN may disclose information, including but not limited to, information concerning a client, a transmission made using our network, or a website, in order to comply with a court order, subpoena, summons, discovery request, warrant, statute, regulation, or governmental request. But due to the fact that we have a no-logs policy and we use Shared IPs there won’t be anything to disclose. This has never happened so far.</p>
<p>6. This type of traffic is welcomed on our German (DE VPN) and Dutch (NL VPN) servers. It is not allowed on US, UK, Canada, Poland and French servers as stated in our TOS &#8211; the reason for this is our agreements with data centers. We also have a specific VPN plan for torrents.</p>
<p>7. HideIPVPN accepts following methods: PayPal, Bitcoin, Credit &#038; Debit cards.</p>
<p>8. SoftEther VPN protocol. Users can currently use our VPN applications on Windows and OSX systems. Both versions have a “kill switch” feature in case connection drops. Our apps can re-establish VPN connection and once active restart closed applications. Also, the app has the option to enable DNS leak protection.</p>
<p>9. Our VPN servers have been checked against those issues. Users were warned about DNS leak danger. Our free VPN app has both kill switch and DNS protection leak options for our clients to use. When customers are using our software we disable IPv6 through the VPN connection. For now we are working to re-route IPv6 traffic via VPN over OpenVPN and SoftEther.</p>
<p>10. Yes, we recommend to our customers to use our free VPN application for an easier, faster and better connection. It works with Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android.</p>
<p>11. We don&#8217;t have physical control of our VPN servers. Servers are outsourced in premium data centers with high-quality tier1 networks. For our VPN we use Google DNS servers and for Smart DNS we use our own DNS servers.</p>
<p>12. At the moment we have 29 servers located in 7 countries &#8211; US, UK, Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Poland and France.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.hideipvpn.com/">HideIPVPN website</a></p>
<h2><a name="vpnland"></a><a href="https://www.vpnland.com/">VPN Land</a></h2>
<p><img src="media/d3da001b.vpnland-1-e1488550455715.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/vpnland-1-e1488550455715.png" alt="" width="180" height="60" class="alignright size-full wp-image-136034">1. We can&#8217;t match a VPN IP-address and timestamp to a specific user or his or her IP-address. We do not watch what our users do online, neither record their Internet activities. For billing purposes, order IP addresses of users are stored permanently.</p>
<p>2. VPNLand Inc. Registered in Toronto, Canada.</p>
<p>3. Yes we use several third party vendors, such as Zopim for online chat messages and Picreel for promotional purposes.</p>
<p>4. In most cases DMCA emails are ignored. We had to block non-common ports on our USA servers, so no DMCA emails coming against our US VPN Servers.</p>
<p>5. It hasn’t happened. In case if it happens we’ll definitely analyze it and take proper actions.</p>
<p>6. P2P traffic is blocked on our USA servers, other jurisdictions are OK for p2p. All traffic is treated equally.</p>
<p>7. PayPal, Credit cards, webmoney, Paymentwall, Bluesnap. We use WHMCS for billing/support (see also question 1).</p>
<p>8. OpenVPN – 256bit.</p>
<p>9. IPv6 traffic is filtered. Unfortunately no “kill-switch” feature at the moment.</p>
<p>10. Yes. Windows. Mobile app is currently under development.</p>
<p>11. We own some of the servers in Toronto. Other countries are rented servers.</p>
<p>12. <a href="https://www.vpnland.com/vpn-servers/">See here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.vpnland.com/">VPN Land website</a></p>
<h2><a name="vpnht"></a><a href="https://vpn.ht/">VPN.ht</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-135963" src="media/42744d39.vpnht-1.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/vpnht-1.png" alt="" width="180" height="63">1. We do not keep such data (logs).</p>
<p>2. VPN.ht Limited is incorporated in Hong Kong</p>
<p>3. Google Analytics. We are switching this to PIWIK</p>
<p>4. We do not handle DMCA notices, our data center partners do, and in all cases we do not keep logs so we cannot identify the customer.</p>
<p>5. We will stop updating our Warrant Canary.</p>
<p>6. All Protocol are allowed in all our locations.</p>
<p>7. We accept various payment methods: Credit card / PayPal / Bitcoin / Other national Payments. All are linked by an email.</p>
<p>8. For general use 128bit AES, but we do offer 256bit AES as Maximum encryption level.</p>
<p>9. We are currently deploying our Ipv6 network across our servers. We provide all our VPN users with a private log-less DNS server. Our application also offers various features such as a Kill switch.</p>
<p>10. Our application is open-source and can be found on github.com/vpnht. Currently, we are offering custom applications for Windows / Mac / Android / iOS.</p>
<p>11. We don&#8217;t, but we do have a strong relationship with our partners who operate data centers.</p>
<p>12. We have 127 servers <a href="https://vpn.ht/servers">in around 33 countries</a> and we try our best to expand to locations most requested by our customers.</p>
<p><a href="https://vpn.ht/">VPN.ht website</a></p>
<h2><a name="ovpn"></a> <a href="https://www.ovpn.se/">OVPN</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-118114" src="media/ea310744.ovpn.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/ovpn.png" alt="ovpn" width="148" height="61">1. Our entire infrastructure and VPN service is built to ensure that no logs can be stored – anywhere. Our servers are locked in cabinets and operate without any hard drives. We use a tailored version of Debian, which doesn’t support SATA controllers, USB ports etc. To further increase security, we use TRESOR and grsecurity to be resistant to cold boot attacks.</p>
<p>2. OVPN Integritet AB (Org no. 556999-4469). We operate under Swedish jurisdiction.</p>
<p>3. For website insights, we use Piwik, an Open Source solution that we host ourselves. The last two bytes of visitors’ IP addresses are anonymized; hence no individual users can be identified. For support, we use an internally built system.</p>
<p>The mail server is hosted by Glesys, a trusted provider in Sweden. Automatic emails from the website are sent using Mailgun, but we never send any sensitive information via email. Zopim is used for live chat, which we will eventually migrate from when we’ve built a satisfactory in-house solution.</p>
<p>4. Since we don’t store any content, such requests aren’t applicable to us.</p>
<p>5. No court orders have ever been received. However, the police have contacted us numerous times regarding whom had a specific IP address at a particular time. Due to the reasons mentioned in #1, we can’t provide them with any answers.</p>
<p>We <a href="https://www.ovpn.se/en/blog/open-letter-to-the-swedish-police/">published</a> an open letter to the Swedish police to disclose that we are unable to provide any user information they request. We also have an insurance that covers trial expenses enabling us to take any requests to court in case an agency doubts our truthfulness.</p>
<p>6. Yes.</p>
<p>7. Bitcoin, Braintree for credit cards, PayPal &amp; cash payments via postal mail. There’s a connection between payments and accounts, which is required in order to know who bought what. We recommend all users to pay anonymously.</p>
<p>8. We only provide OpenVPN and utilize AES-256-CBC, and a 2048-bit Diffie–Hellman key along with a 1024-bit TLS key to ensure that the key exchange can be done safely during the authentication phase.</p>
<p>9. We tunnel both IPv4 and IPv6 and therefore no leaks should happen. Our custom client has DNS leak protection as well as a killswitch to ensure our users safety.</p>
<p>10. Yes, we offer a custom VPN client for Windows, OS X and Ubuntu. We’ve also developed and manufactured a router with extensive functionality and security precautions, named <a href="https://www.ovpn.se/en/box">OVPNbox</a>. </p>
<p>11. Yes &#8211; we own all the servers used to operate OVPN. Our servers are locked in separate cabinets in each data center. However, using physical force one could break open the cabinets and therefore get physical access to our servers. To mitigate these extreme scenarios we have focused immensely on the physical security of our servers. Someone can literally be standing right next to our servers and will still fail to extract any data.</p>
<p>More information on OVPN’s physical security is available <a href="https://www.ovpn.se/en/blog/improvement-of-the-physical-security/">here</a>.</p>
<p>12. Canada, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ovpn.se/">OVPN website</a></p>
<h2><a name="perfectprivacy"></a><a href="https://www.perfect-privacy.com/">Perfect Privacy</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-92195" src="media/d6caff16.pplogovpn.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/pplogovpn.jpg" alt="pplogovpn" width="178" height="178" srcset="https://torrentfreak.com/images/pplogovpn.jpg 178w, https://torrentfreak.com/images/pplogovpn-150x150.jpg 150w" sizes="(max-width: 178px) 100vw, 178px">1. We do not log or store any traffic, IP addresses, or any other kind of data that would allow identification of our users or their activities. The anonymity and privacy of our users are our highest priority, and the Perfect Privacy infrastructure was built with this in mind.</p>
<p>2. Perfect Privacy is registered in Zug, Switzerland.</p>
<p>3. All email and support tools are developed and hosted in-house under our control. We do use Google Analytics for website optimization and better market reach, but with the anonymizeIp parameter set. However, Perfect Privacy users are exempted from any tracking by Google Analytics and are also able to use our TrackStop filter which will block any tracking (as well as ads and known malware domains) directly on our servers.</p>
<p>4. Because we do not host any data, DMCA notices do not directly affect us. However, we do receive copyright violation notices for filesharing in which case we truthfully reply that we have no data that would allow us to identify the party responsibly.</p>
<p>5. The only step on our side is to inform the contacting party that we do not have any data that would allow the identification of a user. There had been incidents in the past where Perfect Privacy servers have been seized but never was any user information compromised that way. Since no logs are stored in the first place and additionally all our services are running within ramdisks, a server seizure will never compromise our customers.</p>
<p>6. Yes, Bittorrent and other file-sharing is generally allowed and treated equally to other traffic. However, at certain locations that are known to treat copyright violations rather harshly (very quick termination of servers), we block the most popular torrent trackers to reduce the impact of this problem. Currently this is the case for servers located in the United States and France.</p>
<p>7. We offer a variety of payment options ranging from anonymous methods such as sending cash, or Bitcoin. However, we also offer payment with PayPal and credit cards for users who prefer these options. We keep no data about the payment except for when the payment was received which is linked only to an anonymous account number.</p>
<p>8. While we offer a range of connection possibilities we would recommend using OpenVPN with 256 bit AES encryption. Additional security can be established by using a cascaded connection: The Perfect Privacy VPN Manager allows to cascade your OpenVPN connection over up to four freely choosable servers.</p>
<p>9. Perfect Privacy provides full IPv6 support (meaning you will get an IPv6 address even if your ISP does not offer IPv6) and as such it is fully integrated in the firewall protection. The &#8220;Kill Switch&#8221; is activated by default and will prevent any IP and DNS leaks for both IPv4 and IPv6.</p>
<p>10. Yes, we offer custom clients for Windows, Linux, MacOS X and Android at the moment. At the time of this article, the Linux, Mac and Android clients are still in open beta. More functionality will be added to these clients in the near future.</p>
<p>11. Our VPN servers run in various data centers around the world. While we have no physical access to the servers, they all are running within RAM disks only and are fully encrypted.</p>
<p>12. We offer servers in 23 countries. For full details about all servers locations please check our <a href="https://www.perfect-privacy.com/serverstatus/">server status</a> site as we are constantly adding new servers.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.perfect-privacy.com/">Perfect Privacy website</a></p>
<h2><a name="vpnunlimited"></a> <a href="https://www.vpnunlimitedapp.com/">VPN Unlimited</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-102034" src="media/ac7427b8.vpnunlim.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/vpnunlim.png" alt="vpnunlim" width="227" height="59">1. No, we do not keep logs that allow us to match IP or DNS addresses of online services our customers visit from their accounts.</p>
<p>2. KeepSolid Inc. We operate under the USA jurisdiction.</p>
<p>3. We use Zendesk for technical support purpose, Fabric to get statistics on crashes and fix bugs asap. We send emails to our customers via SparkPost. Emails are not linked to any personal information of our users and we take special care of security of our users email addresses too.</p>
<p>On our site we use Google Analytics to collect anonymous statistics on page views, clicks, etc. Our users’ personal information is not stored or disclosed to third parties.</p>
<p>4. As we do not log any of the customers’ information or session data, VPN Unlimited users are protected by legal definition. There is a US consumer protection law that can be used to protect our customers.</p>
<p>5. We have no information we could disclose as we don&#8217;t log addresses of sites our customers visit.</p>
<p>6. We allow legal peer-to-peer file sharing using servers in France, Luxembourg, Romania, Canada, and San Francisco. VPN Unlimited is not to be widely used for torrenting as its primary task is to protect users’ online privacy and anonymity.</p>
<p>7. We accept over 100 payment methods: from credit cards to PayPal to Bitcoin to payments through mobile operators. And, of course, users can use their Apple or Amazon ID account, from the purchasing tab inside the app to prolong their subscription to our service. All of the payment systems we use ensure 99.99% security.</p>
<p>8. We recommend using KeepSolid Wise that enables AES256 encryption with additional obfuscation for users from countries with heavily censored access to web resources (like China, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, etc.). It’s also the most secure protocol for usage in a dangerous internet environment (e.g. in public WiFi networks).</p>
<p>9. We partially support IPv6. The service doesn’t have a “kill switch” feature yet, and DNS leak protection works on Windows. We are also working on an update to add a DNS firewall that will protect our users from tracking, malware and ads.</p>
<p>10. We offer store versions along with standalone apps for iOS, Android, Mac, Windows (desktop), Windows Phone, and Linux users. Last year we launched plugins for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. We collaborate with FlashRouters so users can purchase a router, protected by our VPN. Also, users can get personal servers with dedicated IP addresses for their use.</p>
<p>11. We do not own data centers. We rent physical and virtual servers from well-trusted companies like LeaseWeb, OVH, RedStation, ServerCentral, IBM SoftLayer, etc. We have full control over DNS servers that are being used for work via VPN.</p>
<p>12. Servers are located in 51 countries. We regularly launch new servers in new regions. The whole list is available <a href="https://www.vpnunlimitedapp.com/en/info/specials/server-locations">on our site</a>. Users can contact us through this page and suggest a location for us to launch the next server in.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.vpnunlimitedapp.com/">VPN Unlimited website</a></p>
<h2><a name="ivacy"></a><a href="https://www.ivacy.com/">Ivacy</a></h2>
<p><img src="media/f6efcbbd.ivacy.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/ivacy.png" alt="" width="180" height="65" class="alignright size-full wp-image-136016">1. Ivacy believes in anonymity and therefore we do not maintain user activity logs. </p>
<p>We only keep track of login attempts because we allow 5 multiple/simultaneous connections with one VPN account. We come across encrypted credentials in this process. The process is fully automated and we keep this info till the user is connected. It is automatically deleted as soon as user disconnects from our server. Since we don’t come across any personal IP address in this process, we can’t map any connection to any IP address.</p>
<p>2. Ivacy is registered under PMG Private Limited. Our headquarter is based in Singapore; one of the few nations without mandatory data retention laws. Working out of the region allows us to further ensure the anonymity of our users- something we hold very dear. At the present moment in time, there seems to be no legal hindrance or government intervention that could harm our reasoning behind working out of Singapore.</p>
<p>3. We use Aweber for sending emails to our customers, and our live chat services are managed by Livechatinc’s platform.</p>
<p>4. We cannot relate any specific activity with any specific user, since we don’t keep any logs or records. Moreover, working from Singapore, one of the few nations without mandatory data retention laws, allows us to further ensure the anonymity of our users. We have not come across such an event, but if we do receive any legal notice, we cannot do anything more than to ignore it simply because they have no legal binding to us. Since we are based in Singapore, all legal notices have to be dealt with according to Singapore laws first.</p>
<p>5. Again, such a scenario has not presented itself yet. We do not log any traffic or session data so we cannot identify and connect a specific activity with a particular user of our service.</p>
<p>6. We are proud to mention here that we allow P2P traffic on many of our marked servers including servers in UK, USA and Canada.</p>
<p>7. We accept payment through major credit cards, BitCoin, PayPal, Webmoney and Perfect Money. Apart from the aforementioned payment methods, we also accept more than 120 region based payments through PaymentWall. When a customer places an order, we immediately send a payment confirmation email to let him know that he has placed an order successfully. Then our merchant takes over and verifies the information given by the customer and lets us know whether to deliver the order or not. This process normally takes typically from 5 &#8211; 60 minutes.</p>
<p>8. We offer and recommend 256 bit encryption in addition to SSL based protocols (i.e. SSTP and OpenVPN). We offer our own DNS servers, an “Internet Kill Switch” and Split Tunneling features.</p>
<p>9. We have IPv6 Leak Protection feature in our Apps. Customers can enable it via settings; and we highly recommend them to do so. We provide DNS leak protection by providing our own DNS servers. We also have Internet Kill Switch in our Windows and Android apps. Soon we are launching same for Mac and iOS devices.</p>
<p>10. Yes, we offer custom VPN applications to our users. These include VPN Apps for Windows, Android, Mac and iOS. We also have a dedicated VPN addon for Kodi running on OpenELEC based devices and Raspberry Pi.</p>
<p>11. We physically control some of our server locations where we have a heavier load. Other locations are hosted with third parties until we have enough traffic in that location to justify racking our own server setup. We host with multiple providers in each location. We have server locations in more than forty countries. In all cases, our network nodes load over our encrypted network. Anyone taking control of the server would have no usable data on the disk. Yes, we have our own DNS servers.</p>
<p>12. We have servers located in more than 40 countries. You can find the complete list of servers <a href="https://support.ivacy.com/kb/manual-setup-hostname-list-new/">here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ivacy.com/">Ivacy website</a></p>
<h2><a name="whatheserver"></a><a href="http://whattheserver.me/">WhatTheServer</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-135970" src="media/420c367c.whatheserver-e1488473253988.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/whatheserver-e1488473253988.png" alt="" width="180" height="60">1. Our OpenVPN servers are configured with &#8220;verb 0&#8221; so that they keep no logs at all. Our SOCKS Proxy servers do keep authentication logs which include the IP address, but these logs are cleared every 6 hours. We have a session management system that tracks which users are logged into which servers, however that system operates on real-time data and does not log events.</p>
<p>2. What The * Services, LLC is incorporated in the USA.</p>
<p>3. We use Google Analytics on our website for visitors.</p>
<p>4. We respond saying that we are a VPS/VPN provider and that we do not have the logs requested nor any other logs about our customers usage of our service.</p>
<p>5. We have not yet received such a court order or subpoena for user information. However, if we do in the future, we will take several steps. First, we would consult with our lawyers to confirm the validity of the order/subpoena, and respond accordingly if it is NOT a valid order/subpoena. Then we would alert our user of the event if we are legally able to.</p>
<p>If the order/subpoena is valid, we would see if we have the ability to provide the information requested, and respond accordingly we do NOT have the information requested. If we DO have the information requested, we would immediately reconfigure our systems to stop keeping that information. Then we would consult with our lawyer to determine if there is anyway we can fight the order/subpoena and/or what is the minimum level of compliance we must meet.</p>
<p>6. BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic is allowed on all VPN/Proxy servers which are NOT located in the USA.</p>
<p>7. Our payment options include PayPal, Bit-Pay (bitcoin), PerfectMoney, and Coinbase (bitcoin). When a user selects a payment method our system will remember that payment method and link it to their account. For this reason, we suggest that our users do not put in their real name &#038; contact information, and that they should pay us anonymously via Bitcoin.</p>
<p>8. All of our OpenVPN and SOCKS Proxy servers are running OpenBSD and are using LibreSSL instead of OpenSSL. This protects our servers from a wide range of attacks on the encryption.</p>
<p>Our OpenVPN Servers use AES-256-CBC &amp; SHA512 HMAC for the Data Channel, and DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 on the Control Channel. Our OpenVPN Servers are also configured with 4096bit RSA keys and a custom 4096bit Diffie-Hellman parameters. Our SOCKS Proxy is based on OpenSSH, so they support any ciphers the client wants to use. With OpenSSH, the Client decides what cipher to use instead of the Server.</p>
<p>We push routes to our OpenVPN Clients which instruct them to route all IP traffic which is not destined for their local network to be routed through the VPN. This includes DNS traffic. We push OpenVPN Client configuration files which include &#8220;resolv-retry infinite&#8221; and &#8220;perstist-tun&#8221;, which when combined should prevent the Client from sending traffic in-the-clear unless the user manually kills the OpenVPN connection.</p>
<p>Furthermore, all of our OpenVPN and SOCKS Proxy servers are full IPv4/IPv6 Dual-Stack and we push a default route for both IPv4 and IPv6 to our clients. This is critical because if your home ISP gives you an IPv6 address, your computer will use IPv6 instead of IPv4. You will leak a significant amount of traffic if we did not push you a default route for IPv6.</p>
<p>9. We do not offer DNS leak protection via kill switches.</p>
<p>10. We do not offer a custom VPN application. Instead, we instruct our users to install an OpenVPN client of their choice from a trusted source i.e. openvpn.net.</p>
<p>11. All of our infrastructure is hosted in 3rd party colocations. However, we use full-disk-encryption on all of our servers.</p>
<p>12. We have servers in the USA, Germany, Netherlands, and Sweden.</p>
<p><a href="http://whattheserver.me/">WhatTheServer website</a></p>
<h2><a name="headvpn"></a><a href="https://headvpn.com/">HeadVPN</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-135969" src="media/1094099d.headvpn.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/headvpn.png" alt="" width="180" height="103">1. We DO NOT keep any logs. We do not store logs relating to traffic, session, DNS or metadata.</p>
<p>2. We’re registered in the United Kingdom under the name “HEADVPN LTD”</p>
<p>3. We are using Live chat provided by Tawk.to and Google Apps for incoming email. We use Google Analytics and a WHMCS ticket tool.</p>
<p>4. Since we don&#8217;t keep any information on any of our servers there is nothing that we can take down. If we receive a valid DMCA notice we can only take action if the connection is still active (we notify the user and stop the session).</p>
<p>5. We haven’t received any court orders. If that happens, the agency will be informed that no user information is available as we DO NOT keep logs.</p>
<p>6. For P2P/Bittorent traffic we have special VPN servers (which are located in a data center that allows such traffic). On other VPN servers, P2P/Bittorent traffic is blocked.</p>
<p>7. We accept all forms of Credit/Debit cards payments through the Stripe payment gateway and PayPal payment method. We do not store any billing information such as credit cards or addresses.</p>
<p>8. We provide all kinds of encryption methods, including PPTP, L2TP/IPsec, SSTP, OpenVPN and SoftEther protocols. We recommend using OpenVPN protocol as it’s the most secure and using RSA 4096 bit and AES 256 bit encryption keys.</p>
<p>9. DNS leak protection is best handled by using OpenVPN protocol (AES-256-CBC algorithm for encryption).</p>
<p>10. For the time being we do not provide a custom tool (in progress).</p>
<p>11. All our VPN servers are hosted in 3rd party data centers with the highest specifications for performance, reliability and security. We have direct access to each server and they all are running within RAM disks (which are fully encrypted).</p>
<p>12. Our VPN servers are located in the United Kingdom, United States, Germany and Netherlands.</p>
<p><a href="https://headvpn.com/">HeadVPN website</a></p>
<h2><a name="vpnsox"></a><a href="https://www.purevpn.com/">PureVPN</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-135968" src="media/790888a9.purevpn-1.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/purevpn-1.png" alt="" width="180" height="71">1. PureVPN believes in anonymity and therefore we do not maintain user activity logs. To better our services and enhance usability of our software, we only monitor access attempts to our server and this is done only for security and troubleshooting purposes.</p>
<p>2. The registered company name is GZ Systems Ltd. We are headquartered in Hong Kong; one of the few nations without mandatory data retention laws.</p>
<p>3. PureVPN does not store any personally identifiable information. 3rd party tools, such as Google analytics, are only used for the purpose of marketing and for improving customer experience.</p>
<p>4. We take DMCA notices quite seriously and encourage our users to comply with necessary guidelines to avoid such notifications. Actions taken cannot be broadly stated. They are dealt with on a case by case basis.</p>
<p>5. Such a scenario has not occurred yet. If it does occur, we will act in the best interest of the user and the law.</p>
<p>6. File-sharing is allowed on some servers. We uphold regional copyright laws and closely monitor changing policies on the matter and is thus subject to change. You can always refer to our customer support for details on which servers allow file-sharing.</p>
<p>7. We accept payment through major credit cards, BitCoin, PayPal, AliPay, Webmoney, Yandex, Ukash, CashU, Giropay, Necard, Mercado Pago, MyCard Wallet and more.</p>
<p>When you place an order, we immediately send a payment confirmation email to let you know that you have placed an order successfully. Then our merchant takes over and verifies the information given by you and lets us know whether to deliver the order or not. This process normally takes typically from 5 &#8211; 60 minutes or so. We do not come across anyone’s IP address in the process.</p>
<p>8. We offer and recommend 256 bit encryption in addition to SSL-based protocols (i.e. SSTP and OpenVPN). We offer our own DNS servers, an “Internet Kill Switch” and Split Tunneling features. As far as incoming traffic is concerned, we offer NAT Firewall, Web Protection and a Stealth VPN feature allowing you to browse websites via virtual browsers eliminating cookie usage.</p>
<p>9. We provide IPv6 leak protection including DNS leak protection and internet kill switch as standard features to our clients.</p>
<p>10. We offer custom VPN applications for multiple platforms including but not limited to Windows, Mac , IOS , Android. PureVPN is also compatible with routers, gaming consoles, BoxeeBox, Roku, Apple TV, Android TV and 20+ other OS and devices.</p>
<p>11. PureVPN provides one of the largest networks. We have servers in 100+ countries. An infrastructure of such magnitude would be rather difficult to maintain and thus we have agreements with Data centers throughout the world. These Data centers are bound by contract and thus cannot interfere with our data without our instruction.</p>
<p>12. We have more than 750+ servers. They are based in 5 continents which makes us spread over the world.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.purevpn.com/">PureVPN website</a></p>
<h2><a name="proxysh"></a><a href="https://proxy.sh/">Proxy.sh</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-66630" src="media/485b170e.proxy.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/proxy.png" alt="proxy" width="185" height="60">1. We do not keep any logs whatsoever. We even have an anonymous token-based authenticating system.</p>
<p>2. We are a not-for-profit unit part of offshore-based digital incubator Three Monkeys International Inc. It operates from the Republic of Seychelles.</p>
<p>3. We use Google Translate &#038; Google Maps across some of our web app&#8217;s elements for UX gains. These can be turned off with a JavaScript blocker. We also use Mandrill for a reliable email delivery, but users may still subscribe to our services with a non-working or disposable e-mail address.</p>
<p>Everything else, from support to billing, is organised in-house. We do not use any CRM, and we do not have any advertising or marketing channel. We only rely on word-of-mouth.</p>
<p>4. We immediately block the affected port on the related node, and then we publish the notice to both our Transparency Report and our Twitter account. In the event we are restricted from releasing it, we make use of our warrant canary.</p>
<p>5. We respond that we are unable to identify any of our users, but that our premises are open for inspection by any forensic expert. We also inform our members through Twitter and our transparency report about the situation. In case we are unable to speak, we make use of our warrant canary and warn our users that we updated the latter. Finally, we make sure to drop the VPN node as soon as it is possible. This has happened once.</p>
<p>6. Absolutely. We do not discriminate any traffic type.</p>
<p>7. We accept more than 100 various payment methods &amp; crypto-currencies. Our gateways are G2A, SafeCharge, Paymentwall, Okpay, Blockchain and eDigiCash. There is no recurring subscription, and all billing information is processed by the gateways: the only information we retain is a transaction ID and the e-mail address of the user account.</p>
<p>8. For maximum stealth, we recommend our RSA 4096-bit + TOR&#8217;s obfsproxy (obfs4) integration. And for encryption strength, we recommend ECC + XOR (secp384r1). Both are available directly within our custom-made, open-sourced OpenVPN client.</p>
<p>9. Safejumper, our open-sourced OpenVPN client, gives you protection against both DNS and IPv6 leaks. It also comes with a robust &#8220;kill switch&#8221; that literary kills the network interface if the connection drops. Our various web apps also test other potential leaks such as GPS or WebRTC and teach you how to fix them. We also have an extended literature to help you fix any leaks (DNS, IPv6, torrent, etc.) manually.</p>
<p>10. Safejumper, our custom-built OpenVPN client, is made fully open source on Github, and it is available on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS.</p>
<p>11. Of course, we run our own OpenNIC-compliant DNS servers. Also, we use our own physical servers in friendly data centers for our core services and our biggest VPN nodes. Our VPN network is also supplemented with a variety of bare-metal dedicated servers or virtual private servers across the world.</p>
<p>12. We provide VPN nodes in <a href="https://proxy.sh/network &amp; https://proxy.sh/status">57 countries, across more than 300 locations</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://proxy.sh">Proxy.sh website</a></p>
<h2><a name="vpnsox"></a><a href="https://www.vpnsecure.me/">VPN Secure</a></h2>
<p><a href="media/b00bd1fd.vpns.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/vpns.png"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-85300" src="media/b00bd1fd.vpns.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/vpns.png" alt="vpns" width="180" height="68"></a>1. We do not keep any logs.</p>
<p>2. VPNSecure Trust. Australia.</p>
<p>3. Google Analytics / Zendesk chat. Email servers and support system is hosted in-house.</p>
<p>4. We do not keep information on our users and are unable to identify the user belonging to the notice.</p>
<p>5. We provide the information we can correlate from the court order, which is zero. Because we do not log the information pointing to an IP address of our servers, it does not denote a specific user. Users are provided shared IPs so traffic is mixed between them.</p>
<p>6. We allo P2P. Previously P2P was not allowed on *some* servers, however we have migrated away from these locations.</p>
<p>7. Bitcoin / Perfect Money / PayPal / Credit Card / PaymentWall, if we need to look at a payment we receive this information by asking the customer to determine which payment is theirs.</p>
<p>8. We have multiple cipher options, AES-256-CBC &amp; 2048bit encrypted unique keys per user account along with our Stealth VPN option.</p>
<p>9. We block IPv6 in multiple places, DNS servers do not respond to IPv6 records along with blocking at the OS level. We also provide UDP blocking which protects P2P users. DNS Leak fix is on by default.</p>
<p>10. Yes, we have our own OpenVPN application for Linux / Windows / MacOS X / Android / iPhone.</p>
<p>11. The main infrastructure is colocated and owed by VPNSecure, remote endpoints are leased servers, these are configured with encrypted folders meaning any third-party that tried to access the server would be unable to access any VPN specific information. VPNSecure looks after all infrastructure and VPN endpoints internally, we do not out-source this.</p>
<p>12. <a href="http://www.vpnsecure.me/locations">47+ Countries</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.vpnsecure.me/">VPN Secure website</a></p>
<h2><a name="securevpnto"></a><a href="https://www.securevpn.to/">SecureVPN.to</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-86764" src="media/cbbacf80.SecureVPNto1.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/SecureVPNto1.png" alt="SecureVPNto" width="180" height="42">1. We don’t log any individually identifying information. The privacy of our customers is our top priority. Our service has been awarded with the first and up to now the only &#8220;Privacy badge&#8221; by an independent review of That One Privacy Guy.</p>
<p>2. Our service is operated by a group of autonomous privacy activists outside of &#8220;Fourteen Eyes&#8221; or &#8220;Enemy of the Internet&#8221; countries. Each server is handled with the jurisdiction at the server’s location.</p>
<p>3. Our website has been developed by ourselves and we don’t use any external service providers.</p>
<p>4. We reply to takedown notices, but can&#8217;t be forced to hand out information because of our non-logging policy.</p>
<p>5. This hasn’t happened yet, but if we were forced to identify any of our customers at a specific server location, we would drop this location immediately. Under no circumstances are we going to log, monitor or share any information about our customers.</p>
<p>6. Yes, it is allowed and treated equally on all servers.</p>
<p>7. We offer a wide range of anonymous payment methods like Bitcoin, Dash, Ethereum, Paysafecard and Perfect Money. No external payment processor receives any information because all payments are processed by our own payment interface.</p>
<p>8. We would recommend OpenVPN, available in UDP and TCP mode. We are using AES-256-GCM (OpenVPN 2.4.*) / AES-256-CBC (OpenVPN 2.3.*) for traffic encryption, 4096 bit RSA keys for the key exchange and SHA-512 as HMAC. These settings offer you the highest grade of security available.</p>
<p>9. We fully support IPv6 internet connections. Our homemade VPN Client provides advanced security features like a Kill Switch, DNS Leak Protection, IP Leak Protection, IPv6 Leak Protection, WebRTC Leak Protection and many more.</p>
<p>10. Our VPN Client is available for Windows and doesn’t store any logs. We plan to offer a version for Linux, Mac and mobile devices.</p>
<p>11. We rent 35 servers in 25 countries and are continuously expanding our server park. It is impossible to have physical control over all widespread servers, but we have taken security measures to prevent unintended server access. At the moment we are using excellent anycast nameservers of UltraDNS.</p>
<p>12. You can find our server list under the <a href="https://www.securevpn.to/index.php?page=serverlist">following link</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.securevpn.to/">SecureVPN.to website</a></p>
<h2><a name="ibvpn"></a> <a href="http://www.ibvpn.com/">ibVPN</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-102028" src="media/3382efee.ibvpn.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/ibvpn.png" alt="ibvpn" width="180" height="68">1. We do not spy on our users and we don’t monitor their Internet usage. We do not keep logs with our users’ activity.</p>
<p>2. Company’s registered name is Amplusnet SRL. We are located in Romania, which means we are under EU jurisdiction.</p>
<p>3. For the presentation part of our web site (the front end) we are using Google Analytics &amp; Google Translate and CDN. Occasionally we are running A/B tests and promotional campaigns that might involve using third party tools like optimizely / marketizator / picreel.</p>
<p>For the secure part of our web site (the back end) we do not use external e-mail providers (we host our own mail server) and we host a dedicated WHMCS installation for billing and support tickets.</p>
<p>To provide quick support and a user-friendly service experience, our users can contact us via live chat (Zopim) but activity logs are deleted on a daily basis. There is no way to associate any information provided via live chat with the users’ account.</p>
<p>4. So far we have not received any DMCA notices for any P2P server from our server list. That is normal considering that the servers are located in DMCA-free zones. Before we allow our clients to use a P2P server we test it for several months in order to make sure that the speeds are fine and we do not receive any complaints from the server provider. For the rest of the servers, P2P and file sharing activities are not allowed/supported.</p>
<p>5. So far, we have not received any valid court orders. As stated in our TOS, we do not support criminal activities, and in case of a valid court order we must comply with the EU law under which we operate.</p>
<p>6. We allow BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic on specific servers located in Netherlands, Luxembourg, Canada, Sweden, Russia, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Ukraine. Based on our legal research, we consider that it is NOT safe for our users to allow such activities on servers located, for example, in the United States or United Kingdom.</p>
<p>7. We accept various payment methods like Credit cards, PayPal, prepaid credit cards, Payza, SMS, iDeal, OOOPay and many more. Payments are performed exclusively by third party processors, thus no credit card info, PayPal ids or other identification info are stored in our database. For those who would like to keep a low profile, we accept BitCoin, LiteCoin, WebMoney, Perfect Money etc.</p>
<p>8. The most secure VPN connection is Open VPN, which provides 256 bit Blowfish algorithm encryption. We also support SSTP and SoftEther on most of the servers.</p>
<p>9. A Kill Switch has been implemented with our VPN Clients. When enabled, the Kill Switch closes all applications (that are running and have been added to the Kill Switch app list) in case of an unwanted VPN disconnection. Our latest applications allow customers to disable IPv6 Traffic, to make sure that only our DNS servers are used while connected to the VPN and there is an option that filter the DNS requests by using the firewall &#8211; to avoid leaks.</p>
<p>10. We currently provide custom VPN apps for Windows, Android, iOS and Mac OS X. We also offer browser extensions (cross-platform) for Chrome and Firefox that are able to route the HTTP and HTTPS requests.</p>
<p>11. We do not have physical control over our VPN servers, but we have full control to them and all servers are entirely managed personally by our technical staff. Admin access to servers is not provided for any third party.</p>
<p>12. Our servers are located in dozens of countries. A full list is available <a href="https://www.ibvpn.com/product/server-list/">here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ibvpn.com/">ibVPN website</a></p>
<h2><a name="trustzone"></a><a href="https://trust.zone/">Trust.Zone</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-118118" src="media/6c7f7954.trustzone.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/trustzone.jpg" alt="trustzone" width="180" height="63"> 1. Trust.Zone doesn’t store any logs. All we need from users is just an email to sign up. No names, no personal info, no tracking, no logs.</p>
<p>2. Trust.Zone is under Seychelles jurisdiction and we operate according to law in Seychelles. There is no mandatory data retention law in Seychelles. In our jurisdiction a court order would not be enforceable and since we don’t store any logs , there is nothing to be taken from our servers. The company is operated by Extra Solutions Ltd.</p>
<p>3. Trust.Zone does not use any third-party support tools, tracking systems like Google Analytics or live chats that hold user information.</p>
<p>4. If we receive any type of DMCA requests or Copyright Infringement Notices – we ignore them. Why? Trust.Zone is under Seychelles offshore jurisdiction. There is no mandatory data retention law in Seychelles. The laws of Seychelles are very friendly to Internet users. Under Seychelles jurisdiction a court order would not be enforceable and since we don’t store any logs, there is nothing to be had from our servers.</p>
<p>5. A court order would not be enforceable because we do not log information and therefore there is nothing to be had from our servers. Trust.Zone is a VPN provider with a Warrant Canary. Trust.Zone has not received or has been subject to any searches, seizures of data or requirements to log any actions of our customers.</p>
<p>6. We don&#8217;t restrict any kind of traffic. Trust.Zone does not throttle or block any protocols, IP addresses, servers or any type of traffic whatsoever. Trust.Zone is recommended to use as the “best vpn for torrenting” by the biggest Bittorent websites in the world – ExtraTorrrent (#2 &#8211; according to TorrentFreak), 1337x.to (#6) and TORRENTZ2 (#5 – according to TorrentFreak).</p>
<p>7. All major credit cards are accepted. Besides, Bitcoin, PayPal, Webmoney, Alipay, wire transfer and many other types of payments are available. To stay completely anonymous, we highly recommend using anonymous payments via Bitcoin. Trust.Zone offers 10% OFF for everyone who pays with Bitcoin.</p>
<p>No logs, no names, offshore jurisdiction, and anonymous payments – we’re trying to do all the best for our users to get their freedom on the Internet back.</p>
<p>8. Trust.Zone uses the highest level of data encryption. We use a protocol which is faster than OpenVPN and also includes Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS). The most unique feature of Trust.Zone VPN is that you can forward your VPN traffic via ports – 21 (SCP, SFTP), 22 (FTP), 80 (HTTP), 443 (HTTPS) or 1194 (OpenVPN), most of which can’t be blocked by your ISP. Trust.Zone uses AES-256 Encryption by default. We also offer L2TP over IPsec which also uses 256bit AES Encryption.</p>
<p>9. Trust.Zone offers a kill-switch. Trust.Zone has no support for IPv6 connections to avoid any leaks. We also provide users with additional recommendations to be sure that there are no any DNS or IP leaks.</p>
<p>10. Trust.Zone provides users with one-click, easy-to-use application for Windows. Trust.Zone supports all major OS and devices – Windows, iOS, Android, Linux, Windows Mobile, Mac, DD-WRT routers and other OpenVPN compatible devices.</p>
<p>11. We have a mixed infrastructure. Trust.Zone owns some physical servers and we have access to them physically. In locations with lower utilization, we normally host with third parties. But the most important point is that we use dedicated servers in this case only, with full control by our network administrators. DNS queries go through our own DNS servers. We also may use Google DNS depending on platform.</p>
<p>12. We are operating with 100+ servers in 30+ countries and still growing. The full map of the server locations is <a href="https://trust.zone/servers">available here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://trust.zone/">Trust.Zone website</a></p>
<h2><a name="doublehop"></a><a href="https://www.doublehop.me/">Doublehop</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-118116" src="media/1a72d89d.doublehop.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/doublehop.jpg" alt="doublehop" width="287" height="103">1. Zero, zip, zilch, nada. For realsies, /dev/null 2&gt;&amp;1. We have nothing to share with authorities, even if we felt compelled to.</p>
<p>2. We&#8217;re incorporated as Doublehop GmbH in the Seychelles. We operate as Doublehop.me, Doublehop, and Doublehop VPN.</p>
<p>3. We do not use any external visitor tracking services such as AdSense. We use Mandrill to deliver email automatically when orders are placed. In the interest of full disclosure, please be advised that Mandrill provides analytical statistics relating to email (e.g., open rates and clicks). We disable these features unless we are doing web development and need to quickly confirm that changes do not impact email delivery.</p>
<p>We also permit registration via Telegram Messenger as a more secure alternative to email. A Telegram message is automatically sent to confirm an order and payment. We use Amazon S3 to provide access to client certificates. Files are protected in transit by TLS and at rest by server-side encryption.</p>
<p>4. Not applicable. To quell overofficious legal demands, all legal complaints and requests (DMCA, Trademark, Defamation, Court Order, Law Enforcement, Private Information, Data Protection, Government, etc) are forwarded to Lumen.</p>
<p>5. We&#8217;ll respond with one-liners from Fifty Shades :D We have nothing to share with authorities, even if we felt compelled to. If we run into trouble, we&#8217;ll stop updating our Warrant Canary.</p>
<p>6. Yes, P2P is permitted on all Doublehop VPN servers and treated equally to other traffic, although we encourage our users to avoid using USA-based exit nodes for such traffic. For example, it&#8217;s better to connect to USA as a Doublehop VPN entry node, and exit Netherlands than it is to connect to Netherlands as an entry node, exiting USA.</p>
<p>7. Doublehop&#8217;s only accepted payment method is Bitcoin. Since we do not require our clients to reveal their identity to use our services, paying with Bitcoin offers privacy when used properly. A new Bitcoin address is generated for each order, and monitored for 72 hours before being scrubbed from the order details.</p>
<p>8. Our users VPN to Country_A, and we route them over an encrypted interconnection to another data center; the traffic then exits Country_B. We use a modern cipher (AES-256-CBC) between clients and nodes, with RSA-4096 for key exchange/certs, and force client use of TLS &gt;=1.2 with the tls-version-min OpenVPN directive. We have h/w crypto acceleration on all our boxes.</p>
<p>Our VPN clients see: Cipher &#8216;AES-256-CBC&#8217; initialized with 256 bit key. TLSv1.2, cipher TLSv1/SSLv3 DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384, 4096 bit RSA</p>
<p>9. We don&#8217;t provide custom tools for good reason (see Q.10 for more info). DNS leak protection is best handled by the hosts file or by pushing OpenVPN options to clients. We use OpenVPN options to offer DNS leak protection (which Windows 10 is prone to).</p>
<p>10. No, the standard OpenVPN client is more transparent and open to peer review. Some VPN providers offer custom software that can introduce security issues or store connection logs. We provide configs for Linux, Android, iOS, Mac OS X (Viscosity), and Windows Vista+.</p>
<p>11. We use dedicated servers that employ RAM disks, software based full disk encryption, or hardware-based full disk encryption, depending on their role and specifications. This ensures that any intervention from a provider won&#8217;t assist in any investigation. Traffic between nodes is multiplexed, defeating passive correlation. And furthermore, Doublehop VPN doubles security and privacy with double hops across multiple legal jurisdictions, to disrupt potential investigations.</p>
<p>Our clients are permitted to use whichever DNS they&#8217;re most comfortable with! By default, we use Google DNS to ensure that users receive localized content from the exit node chosen. This is especially important when it comes to streaming (e.g., Netflix, Pandora) from a USA exit node. We&#8217;re looking to add a SmartDNS and DNSCrypt server in the near future to provide additional options for our clients.</p>
<p>12. Netherlands, Spain, Finland, Canada, and USA, all configured as Doublehop VPN pairs (<a href="https://doublehop.me/infra.html">Map</a>).</p>
<p><a href="https://www.doublehop.me/">Doublehop website</a></p>
<h2><a name="shadeyouvpn"></a><a href="http://shadeyouvpn.com/">ShadeYou VPN</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-86763" src="media/eab9d102.shadeyou.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/shadeyou.png" alt="shadeyou" width="180" height="41">1. ShadeYou VPN does not keep any logs. The highest level of privacy is a main mission of ShadeYou VPN. To use our service only a username and e-mail are required. No personal or real data is required.</p>
<p>2. We are incorporated as DATA ACCENTS LP and operate under jurisdiction of United Kingdom.</p>
<p>3. We are using Google Analytics as a tool which allow us to improve our website and bring our users better experience. Also we are using SiteHeart online support. But none of these tools track / hold personal information.</p>
<p>4. The abuse team of ShadeYou VPN answers as follows: a) we do not store any illegal content on our servers. b) every our user agrees with our privacy policy while registering, so we warned that illegal actions are prohibited and at this time we are not responsible. c) we have no any personal data of our users or any logs of their activities that can be shared with third-parties because we simple do not store it.</p>
<p>5. Sharing any personal data of our users is absolutely impossible since we do not store it and do not keep any logs. Yes such kind of situation has happened but there is not even one existing case when we have shared any information about our users with any 3rd parties.</p>
<p>6. BitTorrent and any other file-sharing traffic is allowed mostly on all our servers. There’s only a few exceptions (such as when traffic is limited on the servers).</p>
<p>7. ShadeYou VPN uses payment systems including PayPal, Perfect Money, Webmoney, Qiwi, Yandex Money, Easy Pay, Ligpay, UnionPay, AliPay, MINT, CashU, Ukash also accept payments via Visa, Master Card, Maestro and Discover. Of course Bitcoin is available.</p>
<p>8. We strongly recommend to use OpenVPN since it is the most safe and uses the strongest encryption (TLS Protocol with 4096-bit key length and AES-256-CBC crypto-algorithm).</p>
<p>9. We are not working with IPv6 at the moment but we are working on it. We support “Kill switches” and DNS leak protection using our desktop client.</p>
<p>10. Yes, we offer our own application which is available on the Windows OS. It is very simple and easy-to-use. Mobile clients are developing at the moment.</p>
<p>11. All our servers are collocated around the world in DC’s of different leading hosting companies. Yes, we are using our own DNS servers.</p>
<p>12. Here is <a href="https://shadeyouvpn.com/support/network-status">an overview</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://shadeyouvpn.com/">ShadeYou VPN website</a></p>
<h2><a name="ovpnto"></a> <a href="https://ovpn.to/">oVPN.to</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-118508" src="media/042fa94a.ovpnto-1.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/ovpnto-1.png" alt="ovpnto" width="135" height="60">1. Short answer: No! We don&#8217;t create or keep any logs.</p>
<p>2. We&#8217;re not a company and we operate under no jurisdiction. Servers are running under their local jurisdiction and have to follow local laws.</p>
<p>3. No.</p>
<p>4. We check portforwards, close them and send the notice into your account.</p>
<p>5. We have never received any valid court order or subpoena. Anyways, we&#8217;re unable to identify our clients and we&#8217;d shutdown affected servers when needed.</p>
<p>6. BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic is allowed, but we&#8217;d recommend downloading from Usenet.</p>
<p>7. We support Bitcoin, Litecoin and other Crypto Currency, WebMoney.ru, PerfectMoney.is and some pre-paid vouchers. No references are left after transaction with Crypto Currency and you can always ask us to update your payment id.</p>
<p>8. We recommend AES-256-CBC/GCM cipher and HMAC SHA512 with 4096 bit certificates, standard setting on all servers.</p>
<p>9. Yes, we support Linux with IPtables and Windows with our Client Software.</p>
<p>10. We offer an open-source Client for Windows and headless API script for Linux.</p>
<p>11. We use rented dedicated servers from different providers and we provide are own DNS servers.</p>
<p>12. Check our <a href="https://vcp.ovpn.to/?site=server">server page</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://ovpn.to/">oVPN.to website</a></p>
<h2><a name="cactusvpn"></a> <a href="https://www.cactusvpn.com/">CactusVPN</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-102343" src="media/7fbdb460.cactus.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/cactus.png" alt="cactus" width="180" height="84">1. We don&#8217;t keep any logs.</p>
<p>2. CactusVPN Inc., Canada</p>
<p>3. No.</p>
<p>4. We have not received any official notices yet. We will only respond to local court orders.</p>
<p>5. If we have a valid order from Canadian authorities we have to help them identify the user. But as we do not keep any logs we just can&#8217;t do that. We have not received any orders yet.</p>
<p>6. Yes, it is allowed on Dutch and Romanian servers.</p>
<p>7. PayPal, Credit Card, BitCoin and a list of other not so popular payment options.</p>
<p>8. We recommend users to use SoftEther with ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 cipher suite.</p>
<p>9. Yes, we have these features. For now we do not support IPv6. We recommend our clients to disable IPv6 when they use the VPN service. with the current version of CactusVPN software for Windows, we implemented a feature that disables IPv6 automatically when the VPN is connecting and reenable it when VPN is disconnecting.</p>
<p>10. We have VPN apps for Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android.</p>
<p>11. We use servers from various Data centers.</p>
<p>12. US, UK, Canada, Netherlands, Germany, France, Romania.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cactusvpn.com/">CactusVPN website</a></p>
<h2>VPN providers With Some Logs (max 7 days)</h2>
<h2><a name="vpnac"></a> <a href="https://vpn.ac/">VPN.ac</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-85315" src="media/bcec9486.vpnac.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/vpnac.png" alt="vpnac" width="180" height="63">1. We keep connection logs for 1 day to help us in troubleshooting customers&#8217; connection problems but also to identify attacks (e.g. bruteforce, account theft). This information contains IP address, connection start and end time, protocol used (including port) and amount of data transferred.</p>
<p>2. Netsec Interactive Solutions SRL, registered in Romania.</p>
<p>3. No.</p>
<p>4. We are handling DMCA complaints internally without involving the users (i.e. we are not forwarding anything). We use shared IP addresses so it&#8217;s not possible to identify the users.</p>
<p>5. It has never happened. In such an event, we would rely on legal advice.</p>
<p>6. It is allowed.</p>
<p>7. Bitcoin, PayPal, Credit/Debit cards, Perfect Money, pre-paid voucher cards and more.</p>
<p>8. OpenVPN using Elliptic Curve Cryptography for Key Exchange (ECDHE, curve secp256k1) is used by default in most cases. We also support and RSA-4096, SHA256 and SHA512 for digest/HMAC. For data encryption we use AES-256-GCM and AES-128-GCM.</p>
<p>9. Our client software can block IPv6 traffic. DNS leak protection is forced by default and it&#8217;s not optional. A &#8216;kill switch&#8217; is available with our client software.</p>
<p>10. We offer clients for Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS, Linux (still in beta), as well as browser addons for Chrome, Firefox, Opera.</p>
<p>11. We have physical control of our servers in Romania. In other countries we rent or collocate our hardware. We have some measures in place to prevent and alert us in case of unauthorized physical access. We use our own DNS resolvers and we encrypt all DNS queries from VPN gateways to DNS resolvers.</p>
<p>12. Locations are listed in real-time <a href="https://vpn.ac/status">here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://vpn.ac/">VPN.ac website</a></p>
<h2><a name="onevpn"></a></h2>
<h2><a href="https://www.onevpn.com/">OneVPN</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-135960" src="media/6f059d4c.onevpn.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/onevpn.png" alt="" width="180" height="61">1. The answer to this question is 50% ‘Yes’ and 50% ‘No’.</p>
<p>We do not keep any log of users’ original IP which can lead anyone to their physical location. We do maintain the login and logout time against the client area username for the bandwidth usage by user. We keep the bandwidth usage data only for 7 days until the money-back guarantee is valid. On the eight day, we discard the data and keep zero logs of our paid users.</p>
<p>2. OneVPN is a product of Unravel Technologies, a Hong Kong based registered company.</p>
<p>3. No, we do not use any external visitor trackers or support tools. For communicating with customers regarding their initial credentials, inquires, support tickets and complaints, we have a customized in-house emailing portal. For sending marketing emails and Newsletters, we use Sandy (Amazon based email portal).</p>
<p>4. Based in Hong Kong, we are not bound by any law to keep logs of our users. The only information we have about our client is the login and logout time. This information can only lead towards OneVPN’s server which the user might have connected to. We cannot provide any further information because we do not have any. If any DMCA or other notice landed to us, all we can provide them is login and logout time.</p>
<p>5. First of all, in all ten months of our operations it has never happened to us. If any such scenario arises in future, we cannot identify the user as we do not have any logs of our user’s identity. We can only lead to the server the user once connected to.</p>
<p>6. Yes, BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic is allowed on all OneVPN’s servers except USA, Canada, and Australia. We have physical servers and in the aforementioned countries P2P file sharing is not allowed. Users can connect to Netherlands, Germany, France, or any other server to download torrents.</p>
<p>7. We offer PayPal, Web Money, BitCoin, and Credit Card option via third party merchants. The user visits OneVPN’s website and selects the payment method. Once the payment is made by the user, it goes directly to the Payment merchant. The Payment Merchant verifies the payment and gives OneVPN the go head.</p>
<p>We send the credentials for the user via email. Once the payment is through it lands in OneVPN’s account. In the entire process, the user provides the required information to the Payment Merchant and not to OneVPN. This way every user is anonymous to us.</p>
<p>8. OneVPN is among the few VPN providers to offer Openconnect via Cisco Anyconnect. This protocol helps users to achieve the highest level of security with 256bit AES encryption and the fastest speed at the same time. We highly recommend all our users to use Openconnect protocol.</p>
<p>9. We do not support IPV6. Hence, it eliminates all vulnerabilities associated with IPV6 leaks. The best and most recommended way to avoid IPv6 leaks is to disable the functionality from your desktop interface. Yes, we do provide DNS leak protection and NAT firewall comes with all our VPN servers. The user does not need any manual configuration or prior setting for DNS leak protection. We also provide an Internet Kill Switch feature in our Windows App. You can also configure the Kill Switch option on your Mac while using OneVPN.</p>
<p>10. We offer customized VPN apps for Windows, Mac, and Android.</p>
<p>11. We have selected the best data centers to host our servers. We operate 100% physical servers which all run on BSD. All our VPN servers have their own DNS.</p>
<p>12. We have 60+ VPN servers deployed in 20 countries. You can check the complete list of all the locations <a href="https://www.onevpn.com/server-locations/">here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.onevpn.com/">OneVPN website</a></p>
<h2><a name="ironsocket"></a></h2>
<h2><a href="https://ironsocket.com/">IronSocket</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-97072" src="media/bf6fc694.ironsocket.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/ironsocket.png" alt="ironsocket" width="180" height="59">1. We keep limited session logs for all of our services. These logs record the duration of a connection, the IP address used for the connection and the number of bytes transferred.</p>
<p>These logs are typically kept for 72 hours, usually less, after which they are purged. We log this data for fraud and abuse detection/prevention. Since we use shared IPs on our servers, and do not log activity, it is difficult to associate specific activity with individual users.</p>
<p>2. IronSocket is owned and operated by Pusa and Daga Hong Kong Limited in the jurisdiction of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.</p>
<p>3. We do not use any third-party email providers or support tools. We use Google Analytics and HasOffers which have minimal visitor tracking information used for website usage reporting and management of our affiliate program, respectively.</p>
<p>4. IronSocket is not subject to the DMCA or any international equivalent. We do NOT host any user uploaded content on any of our servers. While IronSocket is not subject to DMCA, some of our hosting and data center partners reside in locations that are. If they escalate a DMCA notice to us, we reply to the provider that we are a service provider like them, and that we do not log our user’s activity.</p>
<p>5. This has not happened. It is our policy to cooperate with legal orders that are valid under Hong Kong SAR law. The process to address such request is:</p>
<p>1. Verify the order is legal and valid<br>
2. Consult with legal counsel to determine what we are required to provide<br>
3. Determine if we have the data being requested</p>
<p>Because of our privacy policy, terms of service, shared IP usage, and anonymous payment methods, it would be difficult to impossible to associate a specific activity with an individual user.</p>
<p>6. P2P traffic is allowed on servers in countries where such traffic is not restricted. We do not allow P2P on all servers due to the legal pressure on the data centers in certain regions of the world. All traffic is treated equally on our network.</p>
<p>7. We accept credit / debit card payments via SafeCharge and PayPal. Bitcoin transactions are processed by BitPay and major US brand gift cards are handled by PayGarden. We do not collect sensitive payment information. Any sensitive payment information is maintained by each respective payment processor and is linked by a unique transaction number.</p>
<p>8. OpenVPN with strong encryption: AES 256-bit encryption with SHA256 message authentication, using a 4096-bit key for secure authentication.</p>
<p>9. We are currently beta testing a new client for Microsoft Windows systems that offers DNS leak protection and VPN drop protection. VPN drop protection has the option of killing specific applications or the system’s network connection.</p>
<p>10. We are currently beta testing a new client for Microsoft Windows systems that offers support for the OpenVPN, L2TP, and PPTP VPN protocols.</p>
<p>11. We host and maintain our own DNS servers. We manage all our VPN servers but they are hosted and maintained by third-party data centers. We vet all providers prior to engaging their services and we continuously evaluate the quality of service and responsiveness to our requirements and requests.</p>
<p>12. We have hundreds of servers in 38 different countries and are always adding more. The most up-to-date list can be found <a href="https://ironsocket.com/network">here</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://ironsocket.com/">IronSocket website</a></p>
<h2><a name="seed4me"></a> <a href="http://seed4.me">Seed4.me</a></h2>
<p><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-86263" src="media/9e130b50.seed4me.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/seed4me.jpg" alt="seed4me" width="180" height="83">1. We do not analyze or DPI traffic. We also do not keep logs on VPN nodes. General connection logs are stored on a secure server for 7 days to solve network issues if there are any. These logs are deleted after seven days if there are no network problems.</p>
<p>2. Taiwan. Seed4.Me Inc., We are not aware of any legislation requiring us to share client information and we are not aware of any precedents in Taiwan where client information was disclosed. We do not hold much information anyway. On the other hand, we do not welcome illegal activities which potentially harm other people.</p>
<p>3. Currently we utilize Google Analytics and G Suite (ex. Google Apps). Regarding G Suite, we do not store any sensitive information there, only support issues.</p>
<p>4. In case of abuse, we null route the IP to keep ourselves in compliance with the DMCA. Currently we use simple firewall rules to block torrents in countries where DMCA applies.</p>
<p>5. We will act in accordance with the laws of the jurisdiction, only if a court order comes from a jurisdiction where the affected server is located. Fortunately, as I said before, we do not keep any logs on VPN nodes, on the other hand we do not encourage illegal activity. This has never happened.</p>
<p>6. Torrents are allowed on our VPN servers in Switzerland and Sweden. These are torrent-friendly countries with high-quality data centers and network. We treat BitTorrent, P2P, streaming and any other traffic equally on all servers.</p>
<p>7. We accept Bitcoin, PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, Webmoney, QIWI, Yandex.Money, Bank transfer and In-App purchases in our mobile apps. We do not store sensitive payment information on our servers, in most cases payment system simply sends us a notification about successful payment with the amount of payment. We validate this data and grant access to VPN. BTW, we do not require the name of the card holder when he pays for the VPN in our desktop app.</p>
<p>8. Obfuscated OpenVPN with 2048-bit key will be a good choice, it’s available in our Desktop and Android apps. Also, our iOS App has Automatic protection option that guarantees for example that all outgoing connections on open Wi-Fi will be encrypted and passed through secure VPN channel.</p>
<p>9. We do provide DNS leak protection in our Desktop app and we suggest that customers turn off IPv6 support. We don’t provide a kill switch for desktop yet. We are still compatible with free software that prevents unsecured connections after VPN connection goes down.</p>
<p>10. We have apps for Windows, iOS, Android and Amazon Kindle.</p>
<p>11. All servers are remotely administered by our team only, no outsourcing. No data is stored on VPN nodes (if the node is confiscated, there will not be any data). We prefer to deal with trustworthy Tier-3 (PCI-DSS) data centers and providers to ensure reliable service with high security. As for DNS, we use Google, users can override these settings with their own.</p>
<p>12. Currently we offer VPN nodes in 17 countries: USA, UK, Canada, France, Russia, Switzerland (torrent-friendly), Sweden (torrent-friendly), Ukraine, Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Italy, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Israel and South Korea.</p>
<p><a href="http://seed4.me">Seed4.me website</a></p>
<p>Note: several of the providers listed in this article are TorrentFreak sponsors.</p>
<p>&#8212;&#8211;</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135892
title: Movie Company Lawyers Warn Pirate Sites About Looming Blockades
uri: Movie-Company-Lawyers-Warn-Pirate-Sites-About-Looming-Blockades
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/_qn_nX6l658/
content:
<p><img src="media/b13e6c72.blocked-censor.jpg" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/blocked-censor.jpg" width="250" height="170" class="alignright size-large">Following a case brought by Roadshow Films, Foxtel, Disney, Paramount, Columbia, and 20th Century Fox, last December more than fifty Australia ISPs were <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-and-other-pirate-sites-will-be-blocked-in-australia-161215/">ordered</a> to start barring subscriber access to ‘pirate’ sites.</p>
<p>The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, TorrentHound, IsoHunt, streaming service SolarMovie and a wide range of proxy and mirror sites were all included in the action but rightsholders still hadn&#8217;t finished. In February it was reported <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/dozens-of-pirate-sites-targeted-in-new-aussie-crackdown-170224/">that</a> a second round of blocking litigation had got underway, this time targeting ExtraTorrent, RARBG, Demonoid, LimeTorrents and dozens more.</p>
<p>While copyright holders will have little difficulty in obtaining a new injunction against this fresh batch of sites, they still have to follow procedure. A framework is laid out in the Copyright Amendment (<a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2015A00080">Online Infringement</a>) Act 2015, the legislation which authorized site-blocking in Australia.</p>
<p>There are three sets of parties to any action &#8211; the owner of the copyrights being infringed, the Internet service providers being asked to block the sites, and the person who operates the site or service which is allegedly infringing copyright.</p>
<p>While the first two sets of parties are always involved, it&#8217;s recognized that torrent and streaming site operators probably won&#8217;t turn up to argue their case in Australia. Nevertheless, they are given a chance to appear, but for that to happen they first have to be notified of proceedings.</p>
<p>Such notification is the responsibility of copyright holders who must make &#8220;reasonable efforts&#8221; to determine the identity or address of the person who operates the &#8220;online location&#8221; in order to deliver a notice. If that is not possible, then the Court can waive the requirement.</p>
<p>TorrentFreak has learned that during the past several days, lawyers acting for copyright holders have indeed been trying to reach the operators of sites. RARBG, one of the torrent platforms listed in the latest complaint, informs us that they&#8217;ve received correspondence from Sydney lawfirm Baker &#038; McKenzie, advising that a blocking application is underway.</p>
<p>The letter, headed &#8216;Application under s115a of the Australian Copyright Act 1968&#8217; notes that the lawfirm is acting on behalf of content owners who claim that RARBG is either reproducing motion picture and television programs and making them available to the public, or authorizing other users to do so without permission.</p>
<p>&#8220;The Website&#8217;s flagrant infringement, or authorization of infringement, of copyright is occurring on an enormous scale and has caused and continues to cause loss and damage to the Content Owners. It is clear that the intention of the Website is to draw traffic to the Website in order to profit, and away from sources of content authorized by the Content Owners or licensees,&#8221; it reads.</p>
<p><center><b>The letter sent to RARBG</b><a href="media/82ef4427.letter2rarbg2.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/letter2rarbg2.png"><img src="media/baeea6cd.letter2rarbg2.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/letter2rarbg2.png" alt="" width="763" height="1455" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-135919"></a></center></p>
<p>Additional documents were included in the package, such as a statement of facts and a &#8220;genuine steps&#8221; statement. This is a requirement under the Civil Dispute Resolution Act 2011 and details steps that we taken to try and solve the dispute before taking it to court.</p>
<p>In the main, the document references pre-application discussion with four broad ISP groups. There are almost 50 respondents in all including Pacnet, Optus, Virgin, M2, Primus, Dodo, Eftel, Vocus, Amcom, Amnet, Nextgen, TPG, iiNet, Internode, Vividwireless, Chariot, PIPE, TransACT and many more.</p>
<p>In basic terms, all providers indicated that they won&#8217;t contest the application for an injunction but did raise objections over the issue of costs, a common but not insurmountable issue in most copyright-related cases. There will be a case management hearing March 23, 2017, so expect more developments after that date.</p>
<p>Finally, the documents list all of the sites, alternative domains and IP addresses requested to be blocked. The domains are as follows;</p>
<p>&#8211; KissCartoon (kisscartoon.se, .me and .com)<br>
&#8211; WatchFree (watchfree.to)<br>
&#8211; PrimeWire (primewire.ag and gxiso.com)<br>
&#8211; Movie4k (movie4k.to)<br>
&#8211; WatchSeries (watchseries.cr, watch-series-online.eu, watchserieshd.eu)<br>
&#8211; Alluc (allue.ee, .com, .to, .org, and oneclickmoviez.com<br>
&#8211; Phimmoi (phimmoi.net)<br>
&#8211; 123movies (12movies.is and .to)<br>
&#8211; Couchtuner (couch-tuner.ag, couchtuner.com and .ag)<br>
&#8211; Fmovies (fmovies.se and .to)<br>
&#8211; Xmovies8 (xmovies8.tv and .org)<br>
&#8211; Putlocker (putlockers.vip, putlock.watch, putlocker.plus)<br>
&#8211; EYNY (28.eyny.com)<br>
&#8211; Megashare (megashare.at, .sc, .info)<br>
&#8211; GenVideos (genvideos.org)<br>
&#8211; Spacemov (spacemov.net and .com)<br>
&#8211; Kinogo (kinogo.club and .co)<br>
&#8211; Viooz (viooz.ac)<br>
&#8211; HDMoviesWatch (hdmovieswatch.org and .net)<br>
&#8211; Xemphimso (xemphimso.com)<br>
&#8211; Shush (shush.se)<br>
&#8211; ExtraTorrent (ExtraTorrent.cc, .com, Extra.to)<br>
&#8211; EZTV (eztv.ag, .ch, istole.it, zoink.it, ezrss.it)<br>
&#8211; RARBG (rarbg.to and .com)<br>
&#8211; YTS (yts.ag)<br>
&#8211; YIFY (yify-torrent.org)<br>
&#8211; TorrentDownloads (torrentdownloads.me)<br>
&#8211; BitSnoop (bitsnoop.com)<br>
&#8211; Demonoid (demonoid.tv)<br>
&#8211; LimeTorrents (limetorrents.cc and .com)<br>
&#8211; TehParadox (tehparadox.com)<br>
&#8211; TorrentProject (TorrentProject.se)<br>
&#8211; Icefilms (Icefilms.info)<br>
&#8211; PirateBay (piratebay.to)<br>
&#8211; Putlocker (putlockers.ch, putlocker.is, putlocker.biz)<br>
&#8211; Softarchive (sanet.cd, softarchive.la, softarchive.net)<br>
&#8211; RLSBB (rlsbb.com)<br>
&#8211; Putlocker (putlocker.run and .live)</p>
<p><em>Note: Some &#8216;brands&#8217; appear multiple times but are referenced separately in the application</em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136020
title: Pirate Streaming Site Loses Domain, Advertises New One On Adsense
uri: Pirate-Streaming-Site-Loses-Domain-Advertises-New-One-On-Adsense
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/fOpo1pnB6PM/
content:
<p><img src="media/842745c8.pubfilmlogo.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/pubfilmlogo.png" alt="" width="215" height="108" class="alignright size-full wp-image-136028">In recent years, most large pirate sites have faced domain name issues of some kind. </p>
<p>Just last week the streaming site <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/putlocker-loses-domain-name-following-court-order-170228/">Putlocker lost its domain name</a> in a lawsuit, and a few days ago ExtraTorrent had its <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/extratorrents-main-domain-name-shut-down-by-registrar-170302/">domain suspended</a> following what appears to be a copyright complaint.</p>
<p>Another site that was hit recently is the streaming portal Pubfilm. Last week the site had several of its domain names suspended by its registry, including the main pubfilm.com domain.</p>
<p>In response, the site swiftly moved to a new domain name, announcing the change on social media.</p>
<p>&#8220;Pubfilm have changed to a new domain its pubfilm.ac or pubfilm.is. Sorry about that. Thanks for your patience,&#8221; the site&#8217;s operator announced in a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Pubfilmdotcom/posts/184230965398434">Facebook post</a> last week. </p>
<p>However, since not all former users are on Facebook, the site didn&#8217;t stop there. To prevent people from ending up at copycat sites through Google searches, Pubfilm launched an Adsense campaign too. </p>
<p>When we search for &#8220;Pubfilm&#8221; on Google, a prominent advertisement is displayed at the top or below the results. The ad links people to Pubfilm.ac, the new &#8220;official home&#8221; of the streaming site.</p>
<p><center><strong>Pubfilm advertisement</strong><br></br></center><img src="media/768bd1b2.pubfilm.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/pubfilm.png" alt="" width="598" height="582" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-136027"></center></p>
<p>While these ads are not cheap, it shows that Pubfilm is dedicated to getting its users back on board. One of the upsides is that it pre-selects only users without an ad-blocker, who are likely to bump the site&#8217;s revenue in the long term.</p>
<p>Whether these ads will last long is doubtful though. The search engine is very strict when it comes to advertisements, not least due to pressure from rightsholders. </p>
<p>Increasingly, copyright holders have been urging third party services to cut their ties with pirate sites. Hosting providers, search engines, ISPs, domain name registrars and advertisers should all do more to counter online piracy, the argument goes.</p>
<p>While this ad appears to have slipped through the cracks, rightsholders will not shy away from holding it against Google. </p>
<p>Pubfilm, meanwhile, will probably be happy with the extra attention it receives. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=135905
title: Film Company Launches Fake KickassTorrents to Convert Pirates
uri: Film-Company-Launches-Fake-KickassTorrents-to-Convert-Pirates
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/3nbN7aFKFxE/
content:
<p><a href="media/b408680c.fake.jpg" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/fake.jpg"><img src="media/23431dd4.fake.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/fake.jpg" alt="" width="190" height="126" class="alignright size-full wp-image-71690"></a>Anti-piracy measures come in many different flavors but are often characterized by aggressive and sometimes counter-productive execution. That being said, there are other ways.</p>
<p>A great example has just got underway in Costa Rica where local film distributor Romaly has employed an extremely creative tactic to reach out to would-be pirates.</p>
<p>Their work can be seen over at <a href="http://www.legaltorrents.net/">LegalTorrents.net</a>, a site that has clearly been modeled on one of the most famous torrent indexes ever. As the screenshot below shows, it is a semi-convincing KickassTorrents clone with a similar logo, color scheme and word cloud.</p>
<p><a href="media/e4e9c68b.legakatfake.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/legakatfake.png"><img src="media/c252738b.legakatfake.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/legakatfake.png" alt="" width="1155" height="687" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-135936" srcset="https://torrentfreak.com/images/legakatfake.png 1155w, https://torrentfreak.com/images/legakatfake-220x130.png 220w" sizes="(max-width: 1155px) 100vw, 1155px"></a></p>
<p>Clicking on a torrent opens up an information page (such as <a href="http://www.legaltorrents.net/2017/02/split-2016-720p-hdtc.html">this one</a> for &#8216;Split) which provides images, an IMDb rating, and the all-important download (descargar) button. There&#8217;s even a feature for magnet links. However, on this site, nothing is quite how it seems.</p>
<p>While the torrents do actually exist, they do not contain the movies in question. Once downloaded and opened they play a short trailer of the relevant movie followed by a message explaining how piracy affects the industry.</p>
<p>Fake torrents are nothing new so at this point, most pirates would probably find themselves getting very annoyed at having been duped and then lectured. However, these particular fake torrents are really quite special as they contain an email address that downloaders can use to get two free cinema tickets for the movie they tried to download.</p>
<p>&#8220;With the creation of our own torrent download page we seek to approach all those who try to carry out this type of illegal action and create awareness on the subject through positive reinforcement,&#8221; <a href="http://www.ekaenlinea.com/costa-rica-se-encuentra-entre-los-primeros-25-paises-del-mundo-que-deben-ser-vigilados-por-pirateria/">says</a> Alonso Solís, marketing manager of Romaly.</p>
<p>&#8220;By providing tickets we want you to remember that cinema is an experience that goes beyond a computer. In the cinema, people enjoy an entertainment space that allows them to get rid of their occupations and dedicate one or two hours to themselves.&#8221;</p>
<p>In contrast to some of the other anti-piracy efforts that have done the rounds over the years, this one is definitely one of the more creative we&#8217;ve seen. Sadly, however, there are some serious problems with its execution.</p>
<p>TorrentFreak naturally wanted to test out the whole thing, from visiting the site, to obtaining the torrent, through to potentially winning some tickets (which we would give back or give away, of course). Disappointingly, the plan failed at the most crucial stage.</p>
<p>After collecting magnet links for every download currently available, we dropped them into a torrent client to test the goods but every single one failed. It appears that during our testing period, perhaps longer, whoever was supposed to be seeding the &#8216;releases&#8217; neglected to do so.</p>
<p><center><a href="media/a7b6b724.problemtorrent.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/problemtorrent.png"><img src="media/4df0d8d1.problemtorrent.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/problemtorrent.png" alt="" width="1153" height="466" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-135942"></a></center></p>
<p>While the idea for this scheme was a good one, possibly great, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. If there&#8217;s one thing a torrenting movie fan appreciates other than a free movie or free tickets, it&#8217;s someone who&#8217;s prepared to seed. Anything less is a letdown.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136095
title: Streaming Pirate Content Isn’t Illegal, UK Trading Standards Says
uri: Streaming-Pirate-Content-Isn-t-Illegal-UK-Trading-Standards-Says
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/cTsPBcWiGeA/
content:
<p><a href="media/b356fd08.kodi.jpg" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/kodi.jpg"><img src="media/86968eca.kodi.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/kodi.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="200" class="alignright size-full wp-image-106816"></a>In online communities where piracy is discussed on a regular basis, several base questions continually raise their heads. What&#8217;s the best and quickest torrent client? What is the <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2017-170107/">largest torrent site</a>? Which streaming platforms get movies quickest?</p>
<p>But perhaps the most common questions asked, particularly by newcomers to the arena, surround the legality or otherwise of consuming media online without copyright holders&#8217; permission.</p>
<p>With torrents (where the user not only downloads but also uploads) sharing copyrighted content is illegal in the majority of countries with strong copyright law, such as North America, Europe, Australia etc. There are plenty of cases that have ended badly for uploaders, hence the <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-anonymous-review-2017-170304/">rise of VPNs</a>.</p>
<p>These days, however, people are increasingly asking questions about streaming copyrighted content. Whether that&#8217;s to a PC, tablet, phone, or Kodi-type device, streaming is becoming increasingly popular and thus questions about legality are on the rise.</p>
<p>Streaming is without a doubt a safer option than using torrents since there is no uploading (distribution). Without this crucial element, it is almost impossible for a user to be tracked and if they can&#8217;t be tracked, they can&#8217;t be punished or even warned. It&#8217;s notable that the UK&#8217;s piracy <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/uk-piracy-alerts-the-first-look-inside-the-warning-system-170210/">warning scheme</a>, for example, makes no attempt to reach people who are streaming content, because it&#8217;s impossible.</p>
<p>So, in practical terms (if people have no problem with potential ethical issues) streaming illegal content is almost 100% safe. No one has ever been prosecuted for merely streaming content and with the rise of Kodi devices (which almost exclusively employ streaming), it&#8217;s not difficult to see the problems faced by copyright holders.</p>
<p>Dozens of headlines in mainstream news articles suggest that people who misuse Kodi could get into trouble. But these articles often blur the distinction between sellers and users, where the former is probably breaking the law and the latter operates in a gray area. Interestingly, however, we now have a voice in authority daring to say what most anti-piracy outfits will not.</p>
<p>In an <a href="http://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/derbyshire-trading-standards-warns-kodi-users-warns-about-illegal-streaming/story-30171321-detail/story.html">article</a> discussing Kodi, Derbyshire Council Trading Standards begin by noting the problems faced by sellers.</p>
<p>&#8220;Kodi is a legitimate piece of software and the developers do not support its use for illegal purposes,&#8221; a spokesperson said.</p>
<p>&#8220;Derbyshire County Council trading standards officers believe it is illegal under copyright legislation to sell Kodi boxes installed with those add-ons that facilitate the illegal streaming of copyrighted material – although there are court cases pending elsewhere in the UK that will provide further clarification.&#8221;</p>
<p>However, most people aren&#8217;t sellers, they&#8217;re users, and according to Trading Standards, they likely have little to worry about, despite industry claims to the contrary.</p>
<p>&#8220;Accessing premium paid-for content without a subscription is considered by the industry as unlawful access, although streaming something online, rather than downloading a file, is likely to be exempt from copyright laws,&#8221; the spokesperson added.</p>
<p>This statement certainly carries some weight. Although in a different region of the UK, Trading Standards is the driving force behind the prosecution of Kodi box seller Brian Thompson who entered a <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-kodi-box-seller-enters-not-guilty-plea-landmark-trial/">not guilty plea</a> in January. He&#8217;ll face a trial in a couple of months but it now seems more clear than ever that his customers and millions like them around the country are not breaking the law, a position <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/watching-pirate-streams-isnt-illegal-eu-commission-argues-161001/">that&#8217;s shared</a> by the EU Commission.</p>
<p>But while people guzzle on the latest movies and sporting events for free, moves are underway to try and close these loopholes. In February the UK government <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/kodi-box-consultation-launched-by-intellectual-property-office-170228/">launched a consultation</a> into IPTV and Kodi-enable devices, to see how the law could be tightened up.</p>
<p>The consultation is in its very early stages but there appears to be an effort to target not only sellers but also end users under titles such as “fraudulent reception of transmissions” and “obtaining services dishonestly.&#8221; Only time will tell how this will play out but for now at least, it appears that Kodi and other streamers are being given the green light.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136086
title: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week on BitTorrent – 03/06/17
uri: Top-10-Most-Pirated-Movies-of-The-Week-on-BitTorrent-03-06-17
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/17fzlZk7uYw/
content:
<p><img src="media/cd4e8848.fantbeasts.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/fantbeasts.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="163" class="alignright size-full wp-image-131400">This week we have two newcomers in our chart. </p>
<p>Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 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 Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.</p>
<p><a href="http://TorrentFreak.com/category/dvdrip/feed/"><strong>RSS feed</strong></a> for the weekly movie download chart.</p>
<h5>This week&#8217;s most downloaded movies are:</h5>
<table class="css hover">
<thead>
<tr>
<th width="12%"><strong>Movie Rank</strong></th>
<th width="15%"><strong>Rank <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/top-10-pirated-movies-week-bittorrent-022717/">last week</a></strong></th>
<th><strong>Movie name</strong></th>
<th width="18%"><strong>IMDb Rating / Trailer</strong></th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tfoot>
<tr>
<td colspan="4">Most downloaded movies via torrents</td>
</tr>
</tfoot>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><strong>1</strong></td>
<td>(1)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3183660/">Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3183660/">7.6</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vso5o11LuGU">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>2</strong></td>
<td>(2)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1355644/">Passengers</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1355644/">7.1</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BWWWQzTpNU">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>3</strong></td>
<td>(5)</td>
<td><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/arrival-torrent-downloads/">Arrival</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/">8.3</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFMo3UJ4B4g">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>4</strong></td>
<td>(3)</td>
<td><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/doctor-strange-torrent-downloads/">Doctor Strange</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1211837">8.0</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSzx-zryEgM">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>5</strong></td>
<td>(10)</td>
<td><a href="https://torrentfreak.com/la-la-land-torrent-downloads/">La La Land</a> (DVDscr)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3783958/">8.8</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pdqf4P9MB8">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>6</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4465564">Fifty Shades Darker</a> (Subbed HDRip)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4465564">6.3</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6BVyk7hty8">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>7</strong></td>
<td>(4)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2094766/">Assassin&#8217;s Creed</a> (Subbed HDRip)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2094766/">6.3</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4haJD6W136c">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>8</strong></td>
<td>(8)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3521164/">Moana</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3521164/">7.8</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPAbx5kgCJo">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>8</strong></td>
<td>(&#8230;)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3470600/">Sing</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3470600/">8.5</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6BVyk7hty8">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><strong>10</strong></td>
<td>(7)</td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4682786/">Collateral Beauty</a> </td>
<td><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4682786/">6.6</a> / <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isQ5Ycie73U">trailer</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136118
title: UK Govt Refuses to Back Down Over Criminalization of File-Sharers
uri: UK-Govt-Refuses-to-Back-Down-Over-Criminalization-of-File-Sharers
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/WC_DPW8Y3HQ/
content:
<p><a href="media/5d2dadcb.parliament.jpg" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/parliament.jpg"><img src="media/322b8853.parliament.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/parliament.jpg" alt="" width="180" height="135" class="alignright size-full wp-image-82702"></a>Decades ago when the Internet was a distant dream, copyright legislation existed to protect content found in the physical world. As a result, most countries have robust legislation in place to tackle someone counterfeiting a CD or DVD, for example.</p>
<p>With the rise of online digital content, some of that legislation has been struggling to catch up. In the UK, for example, offline infringement is punishable by up to 10 years in jail, while online infringement currently carries a maximum two-year sentence.</p>
<p>Back in March 2014, Mike Weatherley MP, then IP advisor to former Prime Minister David Cameron, <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/is-10-years-in-jail-the-answer-to-online-pirates-150307/">said</a> that the disparity “sends all the wrong messages” and something should be done to correct it. Fast forward to today, and the UK is extremely close to making ten-year sentences for online infringement a reality.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/ten-years-in-jail-for-uk-internet-pirates-how-the-new-bill-reads-161204/">amendment</a> contained in the Digital Economy Bill certainly ticks all the boxes as far as rightsholders are concerned. However, there is a serious problem for the general public.</p>
<p>As the draft law currently stands, anyone who makes available any amount of copyrighted content without permission will open themselves up to criminal liability, if when doing so they expose a copyright owner to the &#8220;risk of loss&#8221;. That definition is extremely broad and depending on how rightsholders choose to frame any infringement, prosecutions could have a worryingly low bar to entry.</p>
<p>This hasn&#8217;t gone unnoticed to the Open Rights Group, who have been putting the government <a href="https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/digital-economy-bill-hub/10-years-for-file-sharing-email-the-government">under pressure</a> to include specific wording in the legislation to ensure that a clear criminal threshold is written into the law. It also expressed concerns that the amendments could encourage more copyright trolls in the UK.</p>
<p>The government has now formally responded to ORG but not in any positive way.</p>
<p>&#8220;The criminal offenses penalize communicating a copyright work to the public and infringing a performer’s ‘making available’ right. Both of these acts are considered criminal where a person knows, or has reason to believe, that they are infringing the right and either intends to make a monetary gain, or knows or has reason to believe that they will cause loss or expose the rights holder to a risk of loss in money,&#8221; the government <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/open-rights-group-campaign">writes</a>.</p>
<p>&#8220;These offenses focus on those causing harm either for monetary gain or a monetary loss or risk of loss to the rights holder. A mental element has been introduced which requires an intention to make a gain or knowledge or reason to believe that the copyright owner will suffer loss or be exposed to a risk of loss.&#8221;</p>
<p>As ORG points out in its <a href="https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2017/why-the-ipo-needs-to-change-the-criminal-offence-for-online-copyright-infringement">response</a>, many small-time infringements can be intentional, from using a photograph of a pop star on a personal site through to low-volume sharing music on torrent networks.</p>
<p>&#8220;As we have said, publication without a license is often an intentional act, where people either know or ought to know that they are infringing copyright. The question is whether these usually minor offenses are worthy of criminal sanctions?&#8221; the group writes. </p>
<p>&#8220;The acts appear to be criminal under the proposed offense. We understand that they are unlikely to be sentenced, or even prosecuted, but the question remains as to why these minor acts should be criminalized, rather than being subject to civil charges.&#8221;</p>
<p>It&#8217;s a question that the government doesn&#8217;t appear to want to answer, despite the relatively easy job of introducing a threshold for criminal behavior into the relevant Digital Economy Bill section.</p>
<p>&#8220;Our proposal is to set a threshold of &#8216;commercial scale loss&#8217;, and revising &#8216;risk of loss&#8217; to &#8216;serious risk of commercial scale loss&#8217;. These are flexible rather than &#8216;specific&#8217;, so the government’s objection does not make sense to us,&#8221; ORG notes.</p>
<p>But despite these calls, the government remains unmoved.</p>
<p>&#8220;It would not be practical for the government to set a specific level of loss or gain at which infringement becomes a criminal offense. This is because the circumstances of each infringement needs to be taken into account,&#8221; it says.</p>
<p>The government&#8217;s comments on copyright trolling also raise concerns. While correctly noting that rightsholders are perfectly entitled to seek compensation when their rights are infringed, the government notes that those targeted have a support mechanism at hand, should they feel they are being bullied.</p>
<p>&#8220;Copyright owners are entitled to enforce their rights. On occasion this may include contacting members of the public who are alleged to have infringed their rights. Such approaches are entirely legal,&#8221; the government notes.</p>
<p>&#8220;However if done in a threatening or harassing way, members of the public can report the solicitors in question to the Solicitor’s Regulatory Authority (SRA). The SRA has taken action in previous such cases.&#8221;</p>
<p>The SRA has indeed taken action against at least one rogue solicitor, but this Achilles heel was quickly spotted by copyright trolling companies. Now, to avoid this kind of scrutiny, none of the trolls currently active in the UK use solicitors to contact the public, it&#8217;s all done by private companies. That means the SRA has no jurisdiction and the public has no body of support to fall back on.</p>
<p>Open Rights Group Executive Director Jim Killock informs TorrentFreak that the government&#8217;s resistance on both counts leaves the public open to exploitation and even imprisonment.</p>
<p>&#8220;ORG supporters asked for small and sensible changes to the Digital Economy Bill, which would reduce the risk of ordinary people facing the threat of criminal charges,&#8221; Killock informs TF.</p>
<p>&#8220;The IPO haven&#8217;t adequately explained why they cannot or should not introduce a threshold for criminality. Without these changes, we could see people being exploited by copyright trolls and threatened with prison sentences for minor offenses.”</p>
<p>The Open Rights Group are calling for supporters to <a href="https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/digital-economy-bill-hub/10-years-for-file-sharing-email-the-government">keep up the pressure</a> by emailing Jo Johnson MP, before it&#8217;s too late.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136092
title: Italy’s Pirate Site Blocklist Expands with Flashx, RARBG and Others
uri: Italy-s-Pirate-Site-Blocklist-Expands-with-Flashx-RARBG-and-Others
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/mrn2xExsBbA/
content:
<p><img src="media/ec156e39.flag-italy.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/flag-italy.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="188" class="alignright size-full wp-image-40399">Website blockades are becoming more common throughout Europe, but with a flurry of recent orders Italy takes the crown. </p>
<p>In recent months hundreds of domain names have been added to the nation&#8217;s pirate blocklist, based on complaints from a wide range of copyright holders. </p>
<p>An overview of most of the key cases available on the website of local telecoms watchdog <a href="https://www.agcom.it/ricerca-avanzata?p_p_id=ricercaavanzata_WAR_ricercaavanzataportlet&#038;p_p_lifecycle=0&#038;p_p_state=normal&#038;p_p_mode=view&#038;p_p_col_id=single-column&#038;p_p_col_count=1&#038;_ricercaavanzata_WAR_ricercaavanzataportlet_search=advsearch&#038;_ricercaavanzata_WAR_ricercaavanzataportlet_sortmode=datadoc&#038;_ricercaavanzata_WAR_ricercaavanzataportlet_ins_argomento0=11177">AGCOM lists 300 blocked urls</a> alone. </p>
<p>Over the past week several new domain names were added once again, including ddlhqfilm.com, flashx.tv, games.torrentsnack.com, mega-wii.com, musicplayon.com and rarbg.to.</p>
<p>The applications came from a variety of rightsholder groups and companies, listing several examples of copyright infringements. For Mega-Wii, for example, Digital Content Protection <a href="https://www.agcom.it/documents/10179/6926764/Delibera+38-17-CSP/3228e3ba-b0b5-49fd-9e6d-a3f3d79899e4?version=1.0">listed</a> several pirated games belonging to EA, Nintendo and Warner Bros. Entertainment.</p>
<p>Based on the information provided, AGCOM ordered local ISPs to block access to the site within two days, as required by law.</p>
<p>TorrentFreak spoke to a site operator whose domain name was blocked recently. He says that in absolute terms, the effect is fairly obvious. Italian traffic to the site tanked soon after Internet providers processed the order, as can be seen below. </p>
<p><center><strong>Traffic drop following blockade</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/63949a54.blockeffect-e1488792145234.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/blockeffect-e1488792145234.png" alt="" width="600" height="204" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-136102"></center></p>
<p>Still, whether this means that these visitors will stop pirating is less clear. The operator, who prefers not to have his site named, points out that people will simply find ways arount the restrictions.</p>
<p>&#8220;These blockades definitely have major effects on site users. Users learn to circumvent them, realizing how stupid their governments are,&#8221; the operator informs TorrentFreak. </p>
<p>The effectiveness of the blockades is also put in doubt by <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/censoring-pirate-sites-is-counterproductive-research-finds-160708/">academic research</a>. University of Padua professor Giorgio Clemente previously ran a comprehensive analysis, comparing traffic data before and after the Italian blocking measures were implemented.</p>
<p>This research used the same methodology as an earlier MPAA-commissioned study which examined UK blockades. However, instead of merely looking at the blocked domains, Professor Clemente also took domain name changes into account because site operators commonly switch domains to bypass censorship efforts.</p>
<p>With this more complete set of datapoints, he found that Government-sanctioned blockades actually increased traffic to the targeted sites.</p>
<p>“The most important conclusion is that blocking access to websites increases their popularity. In particular, AGCOM helps to advertise pirated works, creating the classic and well-known Streisand effect,” Professor Clemente told TF at the time.</p>
<p>Still, AGCOM and rightsholders are convinced that their actions help people to stay away from pirate sites. In addition to the domains mentioned above, there&#8217;s also an <a href="https://www.agcom.it/documents/10179/7141049/Comunicazione+02-03-2017/536228df-3f4f-4ea0-a6a7-5334d56c2465?version=1.0">application pending</a> against the popular streaming site 123movies, which is the next target to be blocked. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136149
title: Prenda Attorney Pleads Guilty to Operating a Piracy ‘Honeypot’
uri: Prenda-Attorney-Pleads-Guilty-to-Operating-a-Piracy-Honeypot
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/nfulABGapeA/
content:
<p><img src="media/17a592c8.trollsign.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/trollsign.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="167" class="alignright size-full wp-image-108977">In recent years, so-called copyright trolls have been accused of various dubious schemes and actions, with one group as the frontrunner.</p>
<p><a href="http://torrentfreak.com/?s=prenda">Prenda</a> Law grabbed dozens of headlines, mostly surrounding negative court rulings over <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/prenda-spoofs-identity-wants-case-sealed-130815/">identity theft</a>, misrepresentation and even deception.</p>
<p>Most controversial was the shocking revelation that Prenda <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-helps-to-expose-copyright-troll-honeypot-130604/">uploaded their own torrents</a> to The Pirate Bay, creating a honeypot for the people they later sued over pirated downloads.</p>
<p>The allegations ultimately resulted in a criminal indictment last year, and now one of the main Prenda attorneys has pleaded guilty before the District Court of Minnesota. A few hours ago John Steele, 45, signed a plea agreement admitting that he is guilty of mail fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.</p>
<p>According to Steele, he and his colleague Paul Hansmeier generated more than $6 million by threatening BitTorrent users who allegedly downloaded pirated porn videos, some of which the attorney created and uploaded himself.</p>
<p>&#8220;Steele admitted that he and Hansmeier created a series of sham entities to obtain copyrights to pornographic movies – some of which they filmed themselves – and then uploaded those movies to file-sharing websites like &#8216;The Pirate Bay&#8217; in order to lure people to download the movies,&#8221; the Department of Justice (DoJ) <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-pleads-guilty-role-multi-million-dollar-scheme-fraudulently-obtain-copyright">announced</a>.</p>
<p>The Pirate Bay played an important role in this case. Not only were the founders of the site heard as <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/fbi-wants-pirate-bay-logs-to-expose-copyright-trolls-150703/">witnesses</a>, but the site was also an unwitting part of Prenda’s honeypot scheme as <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-troll-ran-pirate-bay-honeypot-comcast-confirms-130815/">our coverage</a> exposed several years ago.   </p>
<p>&#8220;&#8230;defendants caused P.H. to upload their clients’ pornographic movies to BitTorrent file-sharing websites, including a website named the Pirate Bay, without their clients’ consent in order to entice people to download the movies and make it easier to catch those who attempted to obtain the movies,&#8221; the plea agreement reads.</p>
<p><center><strong>From the plea agreement</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/a0a83d21.plea-e1488876421191.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/plea-e1488876421191.png" alt="" width="500" height="334" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-136161"></center></p>
<p>Prenda Law went to great lengths to hide its direct involvement in the uploading of the material as well as its personal stake in the lawsuits and settlements, according to the plea agreement. </p>
<p>After extracting IP-addresses of account holders who allegedly shared the files Prenda created and uploaded, they asked courts for subpoenas to obtain the personal info of their targets from ISPs. This contact information was then used to coerce victims to pay high settlement fees. </p>
<p>&#8220;Steele and Hansmeier used extortionate tactics such as letters and phone calls to threaten victims with enormous financial penalties and public embarrassment unless they agreed to pay a $3,000 settlement fee,&#8221; the DoJ writes.</p>
<p>No sentencing date has been set yet. In theory, the Prenda attorney now faces statutory maximum sentence of 40 years in prison as well as a criminal fine of hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, by signing a plea agreement Steele is likely eligible for a reduced sentence.</p>
<p>Steele&#8217;s co-defendant Paul Hansmeier remains innocent until proven otherwise. However, he appears to be worse off now that Steele&#8217;s words can be used against him. Steele&#8217;s full guilty plea is available <a href="media/8db96376.steele-plea.pdf" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/steele-plea.pdf">here (pdf)</a>.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136145
title: Google Anti-Piracy Agreement Will Target Domain Hopping, Share Search Data
uri: Google-Anti-Piracy-Agreement-Will-Target-Domain-Hopping-Share-Search
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/jQ0OEesIGaY/
content:
<p><img src="media/8776ded3.googlelogo.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/googlelogo.png" width="250" height="83" class="alignright size-large">Following roundtable discussions between the BPI, Motion Picture Association, Alliance for IP, plus representatives of Google and Bing, in February a voluntary anti-piracy agreement <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/search-engines-and-rightsholders-sign-landmark-anti-piracy-deal-170220/">was announced</a>.</p>
<p>Under this anti-piracy code, search engines agreed to further optimize their algorithms to demote pirated content in search results, with the aim of making infringing content less visible and legal alternatives easier to find.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/lawmakers-wont-force-google-police-piracy-doubt-voluntary-code-170224/">highlighted</a> last month, details of the arrangement were planned to remain largely secret but thanks to a pair of Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests from both the EFF and TJ McIntyre from Digital Rights Ireland, we now have a somewhat clearer idea of what will be happening between the groups.</p>
<p>As expected, the main focus is the search deranking of sites &#8220;dedicated to infringement&#8221; based on the volume of valid DMCA-style notices rightsholders send to Google. In other words, sites that index a majority of infringing content and are subjected to a lot of rightsholder complaints will find their results buried. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, the report released under the FOIA request is redacted, which leaves some sections ambiguous at best and hard to follow at worst. This section, however, seems to indicate an additional effort to manipulate search results that are generated from &#8220;neutral&#8221; non-piracy related search terms. </p>
<p>&#8220;All parties support the objective of removing links to infringing content from [REDACTED] search results returned to consumers in the UK in response to ‘neutral’ formulations of search query (exact search terms to be agreed) with the goal of presenting the consumer with links to legitimate sites. This includes search results presented to the user in the form of natural search results, sponsored or advertisement results or media player ‘box’ results,&#8221; the document reads.</p>
<p>These search terms haven&#8217;t been defined publicly but based on previous copyright holder complaints, words such as &#8216;download&#8217;, &#8216;MP3&#8217; and even artist or content names could be in the mix. In any event, an assessment will take place to see how they prejudice rightsholders, especially when it comes to fresh content.</p>
<p>&#8220;Selection of such search queries by the parties shall take into account data indicating the actual levels of usage of such search terms, as well as the harm that illegal access to content via specific queries can cause to creators, in particular for new releases,&#8221; the agreement notes.</p>
<p>Google&#8217;s AutoComplete feature, which has proven controversial in the past, will also be subject to tweaks that focus on not suggesting infringing content when neutral terms are entered.</p>
<p>Moving forward, an area that is likely to raise an eyebrow or two is a statement in the agreement which possibly suggests the sharing of search engine user behavior data with rightsholders.</p>
<p>&#8220;Search engines and rights holders will exchange detailed information on a confidential basis in order to better understand how users are searching for content,&#8221; it reads.</p>
<p>&#8220;This information exchange will not be expected to include commercially confidential information, and is without prejudice to the existing legal remedies available to either party.&#8221;</p>
<p>To give an indication of how complex these discussions must&#8217;ve been at times, one only has to look at the following paragraph, which appears to be an effort to lay some of the blame with rightsholders, should infringing links appear more prominently than legal ones in search results.</p>
<p>&#8220;Performance in achieving the above metric should be considered in tandem with an objective assessment of the existence of legitimate websites (of rights holders or their partners, distributors or other authorized locations) that offer consumers access to legitimate content or information for the measured queries, and the efforts made by rights holders to take advantage of reasonable techniques such as search engine optimisation,&#8221; it reads.</p>
<p>In other words, rightsholders shouldn&#8217;t be able to blame Google and Bing for the appearance of &#8216;pirate&#8217; results if they don&#8217;t make legal alternatives available or fail to carry out effective SEO. That shouldn&#8217;t be too much of a problem though, since the agreement notes that the parties will work together to optimize SEO for legitimate sites to &#8220;improve the likelihood such sites will rank higher in results for well-meaning queries.&#8221; </p>
<p>Another interesting detail in the agreement is how the parties intend to tackle so-called &#8220;domain hopping&#8221; by pirate sites. Currently, when Google receives a lot of DMCA notices for a domain utilized by a pirate site, the site is downranked in results. That often leads to the site getting a new domain, at which point the &#8216;clean&#8217; domain starts appearing higher in results again. The agreement seeks to deal with that.</p>
<p>&#8220;All parties will work with the [Intellectual Property Office] to evaluate how frequently copyright infringing websites, subjected to demotion, change their top-level domain (TLD), but otherwise retain substantially the same identity,&#8221; the agreement reads.</p>
<p>&#8220;If this activity is sufficiently widespread as to justify it, search engines and rights holders should develop a process whereby rights holders can notify search engines of the occurrence so that, when verified, such domains can be appropriately demoted.&#8221;</p>
<p>Overall, Google and Bing will work with rightsholders to demote domains quicker, with the latter encouraged to use APIs and better-formatted infringement notices. A whitelist of sorts will also be introduced, to ensure that legitimate sites don&#8217;t get caught up in Google and Bing&#8217;s downgrading filters.</p>
<p>But for those concerned about the potential for this voluntary agreement to spread beyond those currently involved, there&#8217;s something looming on the horizon. Google and Bing have also committed to sharing their work in this area with search engines and rightsholders that are not already signatories. </p>
<p>&#8220;All parties to this Code of Practice commit to ensure that progress or best practice in this area (to the extent that such information is non-confidential) is shared widely with smaller search engines and independent rights holders,&#8221; the agreement notes.</p>
<p>As previously reported, the Minister of State for Intellectual Property will oversee the implementation of the voluntary code, and provide quarterly cycles of research and a review after one year.</p>
<p>The full, albeit redacted document, can be viewed here (<a href="media/e73d0a06.Search20and20Copyright20Agreement20Signed.pdf" data-original-source="https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/390692/response/947360/attach/7/Search%20and%20Copyright%20Agreement%20Signed.pdf">pdf</a>)</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136075
title: UK Court Dismisses Case Against Torrent Site Proxy Operator
uri: UK-Court-Dismisses-Case-Against-Torrent-Site-Proxy-Operator
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/7LKK7ePB6ec/
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">During the summer of 2014, City of London Police <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/police-arrest-operator-torrent-site-proxies-140806/">arrested</a> then 20-year-old Callum Haywood of Bakersfield for his involvement with several proxy sites and services. </p>
<p>The investigation linked Haywood to <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/unblock-torrent-sites-blocked-proxies-camerons-porn-filter-with-immunicity-130728/">Immunicity</a>, a censorship circumvention tool that allowed users to route their traffic through a proxy network. In addition, he was also connected to the Pirate Bay proxy list <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/fighting-censorship-proxies-gear-up-to-unblock-more-torrent-sites-130518/">Piratereverse.info</a> plus several KickassTorrents and other proxy sites.</p>
<p>These proxies all served as a copy of the original sites, which are blocked by several UK ISPs, allowing users to bypass restrictions imposed by the High Court. While Haywood wasn&#8217;t operating any of the original sites, police decided to move ahead with the case anyway.</p>
<p>Following the arrest, progress was slow. It took nearly two years for the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) to formally announce charges, which amounted to one count of converting and/or transferring criminal property and six counts of possession of an article for use in fraud.</p>
<p>The charges related to the operation of a Pirate Bay proxy and two KickassTorrent proxies, and could&#8217;ve potentially landed the now 23-year-old a prison sentence of over ten years. </p>
<p>Haywood, however, denied any wrongdoing and after three dismissal hearings, his Honour Judge Dickinson QC of the Nottingham Crown Court agreed that the case should be dismissed. The initial dismissal was signed late last week, and after PIPCU chose not to appeal, the case is now over.</p>
<p><center><strong>Piratereverse.info</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/1f857a98.piratereverse.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/piratereverse.jpg" alt="piratereverse" width="569" height="467" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-119712"></center></p>
<p>No official paperwork has been released yet, but we were informed that the Court dismissed the case because of conflicting arguments that were presented during hearings last September and December.</p>
<p>The prosecution initially argued that the reverse proxy sites allowed users to make a fraudulent false representation to their ISP, by obscuring their IP-addresses. In a later hearing, however, they argued that Haywood was the one who made the false representation through his software. </p>
<p>The contradicting claims appear to demonstrate a lack of technical understanding on the prosecution&#8217;s side. In their September argument, they seemed to confuse a reverse proxy site with a forward proxy, which would indeed hide a user&#8217;s activity from an ISP. </p>
<p>In the December hearing, the prosecution made another error. In their attempt to explain what a reverse proxy server is, they relied on printouts from Wikipedia as official evidence. The judge wasn&#8217;t happy and stressed that it was unacceptable for the prosecution to submit clearly inadmissible evidence. </p>
<p>While Haywood is obviously pleased with the end result, the case took its toll. There was a looming uncertainty present for years, as well as the prospect of ending up in prison if the case went in the wrong direction. </p>
<p>&#8220;Two and a half years is a long time, I have gone from being an undergrad computer science student to graduating with a first class honours, and working as a software developer for a network appliance vendor,&#8221; Haywood informs TF.  </p>
<p>&#8220;While I don&#8217;t think it has prevented me from achieving what I wanted, it has been a very difficult period of time for my family, and my friends. Having the case dismissed goes to show how the right decision was to plead not guilty &#8211; had I pleaded guilty, I would have been sentenced without contest.&#8221;</p>
<p>Haywood always maintained his innocence and in the end it paid off. He now hopes to leave the bad times behind and focus on the future. As for the authorities, he hopes that they will address real threats to society, instead of reverse proxy sites. </p>
<p>&#8220;I am pleased that it is over, as it was very frustrating. Everyone that I had discussed the case with who had a decent understanding of the technicalities was shocked that it had been allowed to get so far. </p>
<p>&#8220;It is also a disappointment how many resources were wasted in dealing with this case, when there are much more serious actual crimes on our streets,&#8221; Haywood concludes. </p>
<p>TorrentFreak contacted PIPCU for a comment, but we haven&#8217;t heard back at the time of publication. </p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136198
title: “Save The Meme” Campaign Protests EU’s Proposed Piracy Filters
uri: Save-The-Meme-Campaign-Protests-EU-s-Proposed-Piracy-Filters
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/J5fUVvUotyM/
content:
<p><img src="media/96972d21.argh-e1488960943523.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/argh-e1488960943523.png" alt="" width="250" height="206" class="alignright size-full wp-image-136201">Last September, the European Commission published its <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/eu-proposes-mandatory-piracy-filters-for-online-services-160914/">long-awaited proposal</a> to modernize EU copyright law. Among other things, it will require online services to do more to fight piracy.</p>
<p>Specifically, Article 13 of the proposed Copyright Directive requires online services to monitor and filter pirated content, in collaboration with rightsholders. </p>
<p>This means that online services, which deal with large volumes of user-uploaded content, must use fingerprinting or other detection mechanisms to block copyright infringing files, similar to YouTube&#8217;s Content-ID system.</p>
<p>The Commission stresses that the changes are needed to support copyright holders. However, many <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/mandatory-piracy-filters-may-violate-eu-law-scholars-warn-161203/">legal scholars</a>, <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/eu-internet-advocates-launch-campaign-stop-eus-dangerous-copyright-filtering">digital activists</a>, and members of the public worry that they will violate the rights of regular Internet users.</p>
<p>They believe that mandatory filters largely ignore established case law and human rights. Even the European Commission&#8217;s own Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection agrees that the proposal is <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=COMPARL&#038;reference=PE-599.682&#038;format=PDF&#038;language=EN&#038;secondRef=01">incompatible</a> with existing regulation.</p>
<p>In an organized protest against the planned legislation, the Dutch digital rights organization <a href="https://www.bof.nl/home/english-bits-of-freedom/">Bits of Freedom</a> have launched the &#8220;<a href="https://savethememe.net/">Save The Meme</a>&#8221; campaign, calling for the deleting of the problematic Article 13 from the current proposal.</p>
<p>The campaign site notes that mandatory copyright filters can&#8217;t accurately detect whether something&#8217;s a parody, meme or a real infringement. As a result, people may see their legitimate uploads being &#8216;censored&#8217; by these measures, with little recourse or protection.</p>
<p>Through the campaign website, EU citizens can call their MEPs to voice their concerns about the filtering proposal. With a handy &#8220;MEP Roulette&#8221; tool, people are able to call random representatives, free of charge, asking them to reconsider the plan.</p>
<p><center><strong>MEP Roulette</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/e4658669.meproulette-e1488961002897.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/meproulette-e1488961002897.png" alt="" width="600" height="328" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-136202"></center></p>
<p>&#8220;Save The Meme&#8221; is already starting to gain traction in political circles, with Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda one of its top supporters. While Reda also appears in the MEP Roulette tool, as a Pirate she&#8217;s is already well aware of the risks.</p>
<p>The Pirate Party MEP is already a <a href="https://juliareda.eu/2016/12/10-illegal-things/">vocal critic</a> of the piracy filters and last week a study <a href="http://identifies fundamental legal problems with the proposal">commissioned by her</a> identified several fundamental legal problems with the proposal.</p>
<p>The proposed legislation still has to pass through several reviews before it is voted on by the EU Parliament. Unless there are any changes, it&#8217;s expected that the protests and associated memes will continue, unfiltered.</p>
<p><center><strong><strong>Save The Meme</strong></strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/85ba64f8.redameme.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/redameme.png" alt="" width="639" height="495" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-136204"></center></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-provider-anonymous-review-160220/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136142
title: Copyright Troll’s Intellectual Property Goes Up For Sale to Pay Giganews
uri: Copyright-Troll-s-Intellectual-Property-Goes-Up-For-Sale-to-Pay-Giga
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/rcnDBb-XSmg/
content:
<p><a href="media/93aed424.giganews.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/giganews.png"><img src="media/85e3d070.giganews.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/giganews.png" alt="" width="267" height="149" class="alignright size-full wp-image-96972"></a>Perfect 10 was an adult entertainment magazine that also operated a subscription website featuring images of women.</p>
<p>At some point, however, the company decided that there was potentially more money to be made from suing companies than getting the public to pay for its photos.</p>
<p>Over the years the company developed an increasingly aggressive anti-piracy policy, filing lawsuits against any company it felt had infringed upon its rights. After suing Google and Amazon, the company went after MasterCard and Visa. It even took legal against hosting providers such as LeaseWeb and OVH.</p>
<p>While the company wasn&#8217;t always successful, the commodity fueling these suits were cash settlements in several cases. In time, Perfect 10 became better known as a copyright troll than a publisher and in 2011, the company added Usenet provider Giganews to its <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/never-give-up-perfect-10-sues-giganews-usenet-service-110503/">target list</a>. The effort failed spectacularly.</p>
<p>In November 2014, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California found that Giganews was <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/giganews-wins-perfect-10-copyright-battle-150209/">not liable</a> for the infringing activities of its users. Perfect 10 was ordered to <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/perfect-10-ordered-to-pay-giganews-5-6m-after-failed-copyright-battle-150325/">pay Giganews $5.6m</a> in attorney’s fees and costs.</p>
<p>The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit subsequently had little good to say about Perfect 10. The company <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/usenet-provider-giganews-wins-landmark-copyright-battle-170124/">failed again</a>, losing the appeal and facing potential liquidation.</p>
<p>Now, Giganews is turning the tables on Perfect 10 in the most devastating and ironic way imaginable. After making a business out of using its intellectual property assets to intimidate technology companies, Perfect 10 is now set to lose all of those assets in order to settle Giganews&#8217; bills.</p>
<p>&#8220;We are excited to announce that the United States District Court for the Central District of California has granted Giganews&#8217; motion to appoint a receiver to carry out a levy on all of Perfect 10&#8217;s intellectual property,&#8221; Giganews says.</p>
<p>That intellectual property includes (but is not limited to) all of Perfect 10&#8217;s domain names, all of its copyrights, and all of its trademarks. In light of more than a decade of aggressive troll-like litigation, it&#8217;s the ultimate insult to Perfect 10. Some might argue it&#8217;s the most fitting conclusion.</p>
<p>Giganews says that the receiver will now begin the process of liquidating the intellectual property. All proceeds will go towards satisfying Giganews&#8217; $5.6 million attorney&#8217;s fees judgment that was awarded by the California court back in 2015.</p>
<p>&#8220;We won victory after victory over the course of the case, prevailing on every claim and obtaining the attorney&#8217;s fees award, culminating in a unanimous victory before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in January 2017. That ruling upheld early rulings of three separate federal judges in favor of Giganews,&#8221; the company says.</p>
<p>The victory over Perfect 10 is undoubtedly an important one but it remains to be seen whether the former publisher&#8217;s assets will be worth anything like the $5.6m they need to realize. Nevertheless, for Giganews CEO and Co-Founder Ron Yokubaitis, putting a troll out of action is still a good result.</p>
<p>&#8220;We are determined to collect 100% of what is owed to us by Perfect 10 from this cowardly and frivolous lawsuit,&#8221; Yokubaitis says.</p>
<p>&#8220;This is a big win for Usenet and for user platforms over the entire open Internet. This ruling will now put a copyright troll out of business and free up the courts from baseless lawsuits.&#8221;</p>
<p>Giganews&#8217; says that anyone interested in purchasing Perfect 10&#8217;s intellectual property can contact its litigation counsel at <a href="abridges@fenwick.com">Fenwick &#038; West</a>.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-anonymous-review-2017-170304/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136239
title: 72% Of UK Broadband Users Think Piracy Warnings Will Fail
uri: 72-Of-UK-Broadband-Users-Think-Piracy-Warnings-Will-Fail
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/LQRUUMxXvNg/
content:
<p><img src="media/65f2f1d3.getitrightlogo.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/getitrightlogo.png" width="225" height="237" class="alignright size-large">This January it was <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/uk-piracy-warnings-coming-month-heres-works-170111/">revealed</a> that after much build-up, UK ISPs and the movie and music industries had finally reached a deal to send infringment notices to allegedly pirating subscribers.</p>
<p>The copyright alerts program is part of the larger Creative Content UK (CCUK) initiative, which includes various PR campaigns targeted at the public and classrooms.</p>
<p>The notices themselves (detailed <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/uk-piracy-alerts-the-first-look-inside-the-warning-system-170210/">here</a>) are completely non-aggressive, with an aim to educate rather than bully consumers. However, according to a new survey just completed by UK-based broadband comparison website Broadband Genie, progress may be difficult to come by.</p>
<p>The survey involved 2,047 respondents, comprised of both Broadband Genie customers and general Internet users, split roughly 50/50 male and female, the vast majority (94%) aged between 18 and 64 years old. Respondents were asked about the notice scheme and piracy in general.</p>
<p>Overall, a worrying 72% said that they believe that the scheme won&#8217;t achieve its aim of stopping people from accessing or sharing copyrighted content.</p>
<p><center><a href="media/4b4eeb85.piracysurvey-willstop.jpg" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/piracysurvey-willstop.jpg"><img src="media/bf2f5dc0.piracysurvey-willstop.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/piracysurvey-willstop.jpg" alt="" width="608" height="381" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-136250"></a></center></p>
<p>While &#8216;stopping&#8217; piracy entirely is a fairly dramatic goal (the program would quietly settle for an all-round reduction), three-quarters of respondents already having no faith in the scheme is significant. So what, if anything, might persuade Internet users to stop pirating content?</p>
<p>Again, the survey offers a pretty bleak outlook. A stubborn 29% believe that nothing can be done, which sounds about right in this context. Worryingly, however, just over a fifth of respondents felt that legal action would do the trick. The same amount (22%) felt that losing a broadband connection might stop the pirates.</p>
<p><center><a href="media/a2a259dd.piracysurvey-stopping.jpg" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/piracysurvey-stopping.jpg"><img src="media/ca8402bc.piracysurvey-stopping.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/piracysurvey-stopping.jpg" alt="" width="608" height="381" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-136252"></a></center></p>
<p>While the chart above indicates that a fifth of respondents believe that cheaper content is the solution to fighting piracy, an unbalanced six-out-of-ten agreed that the cost of using genuine sites and services is the main reason why people pirate in the first place.</p>
<p>Surprisingly, just 13% said that easy access to copyrighted content on pirate networks was the main factor, with an even lower 10% citing limited access to genuine content on official platforms. Just 9% blamed delayed release dates for fueling piracy. </p>
<p><center><a href="media/f103fae4.piracysurvey-whypirate.jpg" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/piracysurvey-whypirate.jpg"><img src="media/ced861d8.piracysurvey-whypirate.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/piracysurvey-whypirate.jpg" alt="" width="608" height="381" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-136253"></a></center></p>
<p>Some curious responses are also evident when Broadband Genie asked respondents whether they believed certain activities are illegal. While around three-quarters of respondents said that downloading and/or sharing content without permission is illegal, almost four in ten said that simply using P2P networks such as BitTorrent falls foul of the law.</p>
<p>Of perhaps even greater concern is that 35% identified Spotify, Netflix and Amazon account sharing as an illegal activity. A quarter felt that streaming movies, TV or sports from an unauthorized website is illegal (<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/streaming-pirate-content-isnt-illegal-uk-trading-standards-says-170306/">it probably isn&#8217;t</a>) while 11% said that no method of obtaining content without paying for it is against the law.</p>
<p>A final point of worry for Creative Content UK is the visibility of the alerts program itself. Despite boasting a TV appearance, a campaign video on YouTube, some classroom lessons, dozens of news headlines, plus thousands of notices, more than eight-out-of-ten respondents (82%) said that before the survey they had never even heard of the initiative.</p>
<p>Of course, the program is only targeted at the relatively small subset of people who share files but with no data being published by the scheme, it&#8217;s difficult to say whether the campaign is reaching its target audience. </p>
<p>That being said, Broadband Genie informs TorrentFreak that 3.5% of respondents (around 70 people) claimed to have received a notice or know someone who had, albeit with certain caveats.</p>
<p>&#8220;[N]early half of those said the notice was in error due to incorrect details, their belief that the content or provider was legal or a lack of knowledge about any file sharing having taken place,&#8221; the company <a href="https://www.broadbandgenie.co.uk/blog/20170307-piracy-survey-warning-letters">reports</a>.</p>
<p>This number sounds quite high to us and the company concedes that respondents may have confused the current notice program with earlier ISP correspondence. Nevertheless, notices are definitely going out to subscribers, and people&#8217;s social networks are very broad these days. With those variables the figures might hold weight, particularly when considering potential volumes of notices.</p>
<p>The notice system is believed to have launched in the last few days of January and ISPs are reportedly sending around 48,000 notices per week (2.5m notices per year). The survey took place between 17th February and 6th March.</p>
<p>So, if launched at anything like full speed, a maximum of around 250,000 notices could have gone out up until the first week of March. Again, it&#8217;s important to note that no hard data is available so it&#8217;s impossible to be accurate, but volumes could be quite high.</p>
<p>The full report from Broadband Genie can be found <a href="https://www.broadbandgenie.co.uk/blog/20170307-piracy-survey-warning-letters">here</a>.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-anonymous-review-2017-170304/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136277
title: Filmmakers Take Dutch State to Court Over Lost Piracy Revenue
uri: Filmmakers-Take-Dutch-State-to-Court-Over-Lost-Piracy-Revenue
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/DEh6bYek6Og/
content:
<p><img src="media/59d6682b.download-keyboard.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/download-keyboard.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="138" class="alignright size-full wp-image-73383">Like many other countries around the world, downloading music and movies is hugely popular in the Netherlands.</p>
<p>In part, the popularity was facilitated by the fact that downloading pirated music had long been legal under local law. </p>
<p>This tolerant stance towards online piracy changed <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/the-netherlands-must-outlaw-downloading-eu-court-rules-140410/">in 2014</a> when the European Court of Justice ruled it to be unlawful. As a result, the Dutch Government quickly outlawed unauthorized downloading. </p>
<p>Despite the legislative change piracy rates remain high, much to the frustration of the local entertainment industries. Dutch filmmakers and distributors previously accused the Government of not doing enough to counter piracy, while <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/filmmakers-sue-dutch-state-over-lost-piracy-revenue-151112/?preview_id=113447&#038;preview_nonce=edba3fbd4c&#038;_thumbnail_id=111408&#038;preview=true">threatening</a> legal action. </p>
<p>Last year the Dutch Government <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/dutch-govt-denies-blame-for-movie-piracy-losses-160307/">denied these allegations</a>, noting that the filmmakers could go after downloaders directly if they want to recoup their losses. However, they are not backing down. </p>
<p>On Tuesday a group of film and TV show companies issued a summons announcing their legal action, NRC <a href="https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2017/03/07/auteursrechten-staat-gedaagd-om-lakse-aanpak-illegaal-downloaden-films-en-series-7160440-a1549274">reports</a>. Through the court they hope to hold the Government liable, and if that&#8217;s the case, a separate damages procedure will likely follow.</p>
<p>&#8220;The producers could have a good chance,&#8221; says lawyer Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm, who specializes in Internet issues. The lawyer added that the film companies &#8220;must be able to demonstrate that they have suffered financial loss.&#8221;</p>
<p>Fellow lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet agrees but notes that it might be tricky to calculate the scale of the damages since a pirate download doesn&#8217;t directly translate to a lost sale. </p>
<p>In any case, the claimed compensation will be substantial. Last year film industry group VPSO already <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/movie-industry-demands-e1-2-billion-piracy-damages-from-dutch-govt-160205/">asked for 1.2 billion euros</a> ($1.27 billion) in damages for piracy losses that were allegedly suffered since 2004.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-anonymous-review-2017-170304/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136147
title: KickassTorrents Defense Fights Extradition and Human Rights Violations
uri: KickassTorrents-Defense-Fights-Extradition-and-Human-Rights-Violations
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/_Yt7F4xgA4o/
content:
<p><img src="media/2279eece.kickasstorrents_500x5001-300x300.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/kickasstorrents_500x5001-300x300.png" alt="" width="300" height="300" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-99785">Last week a Polish court <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/alleged-kickasstorrents-owner-can-be-extradited-to-the-us-court-rules-170301/">ruled</a> that Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of KickassTorrents, can be extradited to the United States. </p>
<p>The decision came as a disappointment to the defense and lead counsel Ira Rothken informs TorrentFreak that they are planning to appeal the initial verdict. </p>
<p>Rothken just returned from a trip to Warsaw, where he met with Vaulin for the first time since his arrest last summer. Before last week he was not allowed to meet with his US counsel, so this represents a small breakthrough.</p>
<p>The alleged KickassTorrents owner still suffers back pain and is currently being treated in prison, where Vaulin and his counsel spoke extensively about the merits of the case as well as potential human rights violations. </p>
<p>&#8220;Artem is presumed innocent and the failure to provide him with bail in a novel copyright case on mere torrent files, which is an alleged non-violent crime, violates his human rights,&#8221; Rothken says. </p>
<p>&#8220;Artem&#8217;s incarceration makes it so he can&#8217;t meaningfully participate in his defense in a complex Internet copyright case where logically he needs access to the Internet to assist his global legal team.&#8221;</p>
<p>KickassTorrents&#8217; defense team is now aiming for a positive outcome in Poland&#8217;s appellate court, as well as a win at the European Court of Human Rights. </p>
<p>The Human Rights case will also be, in part, based on the unprecedented punishment the alleged KAT owner faces.</p>
<p>The US indictment mentions over a billion dollars in alleged damage to the entertainment industries and suggests that Vaulin is liable for the criminal infringements of millions of KickassTorrent users.</p>
<p>Each separate offense amounts to several years in prison, bringing the total to a potential sentence of millions of years, which is unprecedented and a record even for the US, Rothken argues.</p>
<p>In addition to the Human Rights complaint, which is still being drafted, the defense has a motion pending in the U.S. where the defense urged the Illinois District Court to <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/kickasstorrents-defense-torrents-are-not-copyrighted-content-us-has-no-case-161018/">dismiss the indictment</a>. </p>
<p>In February, Rothken <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/us-and-kickasstorrents-go-head-to-head-in-court-170202/">argued</a> that the case should be dropped since there&#8217;s no proof of actual criminal copyright infringement. The US prosecutor disagreed, however, describing KickassTorrents as a piracy haven that made millions of dollars per year.</p>
<p>Earlier this week the prosecution informed the Court about the Polish extradition ruling, but the defense swiftly countered that this should not impact the U.S. decision.</p>
<p>&#8220;We are hopeful that the United States Court will promptly rule on the pending motion to dismiss the indictment. We believe the indictment is defective and the motion to dismiss will be granted,&#8221; Rothken tells TorrentFreak.</p>
<p>&#8220;We also believe if the indictment is found defective then the US extradition request in Poland based on a defective and thus unreliable indictment should fail as a matter of law,&#8221; he adds.</p>
<p>As the above shows, the case continues on multiple fronts during the weeks to come. Despite the initial setback in Poland, the defense team remains confident about a positive outcome. </p>
<p>For their part, the US hopes that the extradition will go ahead and that the alleged KickassTorrents operator will argue his case during a trial in the United States.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-anonymous-review-2017-170304/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136261
title: Premier League Obtains Intriguing Injunction to Tackle Pirate Streams
uri: Premier-League-Obtains-Intriguing-Injunction-to-Tackle-Pirate-Streams
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/bSSH-Q-tBJ0/
content:
<p><a href="media/0702e6e5.blocked-censor.jpg" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/blocked-censor.jpg"><img src="media/2759597c.blocked-censor.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/blocked-censor.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="170" class="alignright size-full wp-image-124850"></a>For huge numbers of sports fans around the UK and the rest of Europe, football (or soccer as it&#8217;s known elsewhere) is the number one spectator sport. As a result, huge sums of money are invested in its development and subsequent broadcasting rights.</p>
<p>In the UK, top tier football is handled by The Premier League, which is currently facing a growing problem. Instead of paying significant monthly subscriptions to broadcasters such as Sky and BT Sport, large numbers of fans are turning to piracy-enabled set-top boxes for their fix.</p>
<p>These devices, often running Kodi with third-party addons, not only provide free football but also enable fans to watch matches at 3pm on Saturdays, a time that no broadcaster is legally allowed to transmit games due to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_football_on_television#3pm_.22Blackout.22">blackout</a>.</p>
<p>To tackle this threat, The Premier League has just obtained an injunction from Mr Justice Arnold at the High Court which will compel ISPs BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media to block unauthorized streams at the football organization&#8217;s request.</p>
<p>Content providers have obtained site-blocking injunctions on many previous occasions, but the Premier League&#8217;s comments indicate a potentially significant development on a couple of fronts.</p>
<p>Firstly, regular blocking orders usually target entire sites on a permanent basis but this one appears to be somewhat more targeted. The stated aim of the injunction is to block actual streams that are fed to Kodi setups, IPTV boxes, and indeed the Internet overall.</p>
<p>&#8220;The Order was granted under Section 97a of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, and further demonstrates our intellectual property rights are protected by the law,&#8221; a Premier League statement reads.</p>
<p>“This will enable us to target the suppliers of illegal streams to IPTV boxes, and the internet, in a proportionate and precise manner.&#8221;</p>
<p>Since the High Court injunction is yet to be published, TorrentFreak asked the Premier League some specific questions about how it will work from a technical standpoint. The information provided was somewhat general, but reading between the lines it seems the football outfit intends to hit content at its source.</p>
<p>Rather than playing site-blocking whac-a-mole at the streaming site level (from where Kodi addons often scrape their content), it appears that the Premier League might be seeking to go further up the &#8216;content tree&#8217; by targeting the servers that actually originate the pirated content used by sites and services lower down.</p>
<p>The injunction allows the group &#8220;to block servers that stream unauthorized Premier League content&#8221;, as opposed to the traditional approach of blocking single sites.</p>
<p>&#8220;The new block will enable a proportionate and targeted restriction of content that would otherwise have been proliferated to unauthorised websites and IPTV devices,&#8221; The Premier League adds.</p>
<p>Two further pieces of potentially interesting pieces of information come via Bloomberg.</p>
<p>Firstly, the publication indicates that Judge Arnold held part of the injunction hearing in private after The Premier League said it related to confidential information. Second, the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-08/premier-league-can-block-iptv-boxes-during-games-judge-says">article</a> states that The Premier League can now block streams &#8220;during games.&#8221;</p>
<p>Since streams can pop up in unexpected places at any time, it makes sense that The Premier League would seek the ability to react quickly during a game. However, it&#8217;s difficult to see how there can be any meaningful legal oversight if the football organization tells the ISPs to instantly block a stream at 3pm on a Saturday, for example.</p>
<p>In the meantime, Sky &#8211; which is a Premier League broadcaster and also owns one of the ISPs that will carry out the blocking &#8211; welcomed the decision.</p>
<p>&#8220;We are pleased the Premier League’s application to crack down on illegal streaming has been granted. Content piracy is theft, and the success of this application is an important step in tackling the issue,&#8221; a spokesman said. </p>
<p>&#8220;We’ll continue to work with rights holders, government, online market places and content creators to tackle today’s piracy and make people aware of the risks it presents and the damage it causes.”</p>
<p>Once the text of the full injunction is published, we&#8217;ll go through the details but at this early stage, we could be witnessing a new blocking strategy for live content streaming in the UK.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-anonymous-review-2017-170304/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136335
title: Ed Sheeran Tells Musician Fan He’ll “Sort Out” Facebook Copyright Ban
uri: Ed-Sheeran-Tells-Musician-Fan-He-ll-Sort-Out-Facebook-Copyrigh
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/Zfv6g5LKPQ8/
content:
<p><a href="media/ab646571.charlotte.jpg" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/charlotte.jpg"><img src="media/aad273bc.charlotte.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/charlotte.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="250" class="alignright size-full wp-image-136342"></a>For millions of people around the globe, Facebook is the platform of choice for keeping in contact with family and friends. For artists and other creators, it&#8217;s a great way of raising a profile and reaching out more personally to fans.</p>
<p>With two crowd-sourced albums under her belt, UK-based full-time busker <a href="http://www.charlottecampbell.co.uk">Charlotte Campbell</a> is regularly in touch with the public through performances on the London Underground. She also uses Facebook to keep up with fans, but a few days ago her entire experience came to an abrupt halt after she was banned from the platform.</p>
<p>Charlotte&#8217;s crime was to post a 15-second snippet of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2epgc3pdoU">her cover</a> of Ed Sheeran&#8217;s song Castle On The Hill, together with a link to the full track on her YouTube channel.</p>
<p>&#8220;I love Ed Sheeran&#8217;s music and always cover his songs for my busking repertoire,&#8221; Charlotte informs TorrentFreak. &#8220;I find them easy to learn because I play them on repeat at home so I know all the lyrics by heart.&#8221; </p>
<p>However, the musician&#8217;s tribute would land her in hot water after being flagged as copyright infringement by Sheeran&#8217;s record label Atlantic/Warner. Charlotte was informed that she&#8217;d been banned from her own Facebook page for the next three days. If she did it again, she&#8217;d be banned forever, Facebook warned.</p>
<p>&#8220;I had no prior warning or previous offences to my knowledge. Doesn&#8217;t sound like much but for an independent musician making my living from music, Facebook is my primary promotional tool and I&#8217;m already struggling to get heard, it was quite deflating,&#8221; Charlotte adds.  </p>
<p>Charlotte says that it&#8217;s taken her months of daily work on Facebook and YouTube to get her videos seen by a regular 10,000 people, so the three-day ban felt like a lifetime to her.</p>
<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m heartbroken, it&#8217;s just so frustrating. I&#8217;m a tiny artist, I&#8217;m tiny, she says.</p>
<p>But while Charlotte&#8217;s reach is currently pretty modest by Sheeran&#8217;s standards, something magical happened yesterday afternoon. It could raise the singer&#8217;s profile in a way she could never have predicted.</p>
<p>After Charlotte was banned from Facebook, some of her fans took to Ed Sheeran fansites to complain that after paying tribute to the star, Charlotte&#8217;s reward was to lose her voice online. Amazingly, word reached Sheeran himself, who dropped in on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/ccampbellmusic">Charlotte&#8217;s Facebook page</a> to give his support.</p>
<p>&#8220;Just seen your video, [the ban] definitely has nothing to do with me. I bloody love seeing people cover my songs. One of the best things I get out of this job is seeing other people find enjoyment too,&#8221; Sheeran <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ccampbellmusic/posts/10155175672549434">wrote</a>.</p>
<p>&#8220;I asked what&#8217;s gone on and apparently it&#8217;s a bot that Warner have that works on some weird algorithm (I have no idea what that means) but it&#8217;s just bad luck that it was your video,&#8221; he explained.</p>
<p><Center><a href="media/ec3fcf76.sheeran.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/sheeran.png"><img src="media/e6378ca3.sheeran.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/sheeran.png" alt="" width="600" height="255" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-136344"></a></center></p>
<p>While popping by to offer support is great, Sheeran went a step further, promising to sort out the problem with those concerned.</p>
<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve had a word, and i&#8217;ll get it sorted. Sorry again. Keep doing what you do, tis ace,&#8221; he said.</p>
<p>That Sheeran took the time to get involved in this issue came as a big but welcome surprise to Charlotte.</p>
<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not sure I&#8217;ve really processed it, to be honest, I still feel like I&#8217;m dreaming!&#8221; she tells TF.</p>
<p>&#8220;I felt so relieved that it wasn&#8217;t Ed Sheeran who had personally rejected my cover! And it really restored my faith in humanity and in Ed himself.&#8221; </p>
<p>While it&#8217;s commendable that Sheeran got involved, people shouldn&#8217;t be too surprised. The artist is on record saying that copyright infringement helped shoot him to stardom, so a cover version won&#8217;t be of any concern to him.</p>
<p>“Illegal file sharing was what made me. It was students in England going to university, sharing my songs with each other,&#8221; he recently told CBS.</p>
<p>Of course, it&#8217;s disappointing that Charlotte has had to suffer at the hands of Warner&#8217;s cruel copyright bots. Ironically, though, this whole episode is now set to raise her profile, hopefully by a lot.</p>
<p>&#8220;I really had no idea that Ed would see my video about this so I couldn&#8217;t have dreamed that anything would come of it. Now I guess I hope that I&#8217;ll be on Ed Sheeran&#8217;s radar and next time he&#8217;s looking for a support act I&#8217;ll pop into his mind. Or at the least he&#8217;ll pop by my busking spot one day and join me for a duet!&#8221; Charlotte concludes.</p>
<p>If the rumors are correct, Sheeran may well be headlining the Glastonbury Festival this summer and that Pyramid Stage is awfully big for just one person. We know someone who&#8217;s probably free that day&#8230;..</p>
<p><center><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EV1pwmNcFls" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></center></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-anonymous-review-2017-170304/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136266
title: Canada Rejects Flawed and One-Sided “Piracy” Claims From US Govt.
uri: Canada-Rejects-Flawed-and-One-Sided-Piracy-Claims-From-US-Govt
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/VypG1SsCAK4/
content:
<p><img src="media/af081baa.canada-pirate.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/canada-pirate.png" alt="" width="225" height="113" class="alignright size-full wp-image-83641">Every year the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) releases an updated version of its Special 301 Report, calling out other nations for failing to live up to U.S. IP enforcement standards.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-labels-canada-a-piracy-haven-120430/">recent years</a> Canada has been placed on this &#8220;watch list&#8221; many times, for a variety of reasons. The country fails to properly deter piracy, is one of the prime complaints circulated by the U.S. Government. </p>
<p>Even after Canada revamped its copyright law, including a mandatory piracy notice scheme and extending the copyright term to 70 years after publication, the allegations <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-labels-switzerland-an-internet-piracy-haven-160428/">didn&#8217;t go away</a> in 2016. </p>
<p>Now, a year later <a href="media/0f300090.201720Special2030120Public20Hearing20Schedule20Revised.pdf" data-original-source="https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/IssueAreas/IP/2017%20Special%20301%20Public%20Hearing%20Schedule%20Revised.pdf">new hearings</a> are underway to discuss the 2017 version of the report. Fearing repercussions, several countries have joined stakeholders to defend their positions. However, Canada was notably absent. </p>
<p>While the Canadian Government hasn&#8217;t made a lot of fuss in the media, a confidential memo, <a href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2017/03/canadian-government-on-u-s-special-301-we-dont-recognize-validity-of-flawed-report/">obtained</a> by University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist, shows that they have little faith in the USTR report. </p>
<p>&#8220;Canada does not recognize the validity of the Special 301 and considers the process and the Report to be flawed,&#8221; the Government memo reads.  </p>
<p>&#8220;The Report fails to employ a clear methodology and the findings tend to rely on industry allegations rather than empirical evidence and objective analysis.&#8221;</p>
<p>The document in question was prepared for Minister Mélanie Joly last year after the 2016 report was published. It points out, in no uncertain terms, that Canada doesn&#8217;t recognize the validity of the 301 process and includes several talking points for the media. </p>
<p><center><strong>Excerpt from the note</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/a1b78c7e.canadaustr-e1489061825281.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/canadaustr-e1489061825281.png" alt="" width="600" height="397" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-136292"></center></p>
<p>This year, rightsholders have once again labeled Canada a &#8220;<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/canada-remains-a-safe-haven-for-online-piracy-rightsholders-claim-170214/">piracy haven</a>&#8221; so it wouldn&#8217;t be a big surprise if it&#8217;s listed again. Based on the Canadian Government&#8217;s lack of response, it is likely that the Northern neighbor still has little faith in the report.  </p>
<p>TorrentFreak spoke with law professor Micheal Geist, who has been very critical of the USTR&#8217;s 301-process in the past. He believes that Canada is doing the right thing and characterizes the yearly 301 report as biased. </p>
<p>&#8220;I think the Canadian government is exactly right in its assessment of the Special 301 report process. It is little more than a lobbying document and the content largely reflects biased submissions from lobby groups,&#8221; Geist tells TorrentFreak.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2017/03/why-canada-is-now-home-to-some-of-the-toughest-anti-piracy-rules-in-the-world-and-what-should-come-next/">recent article</a> the professor explains that, contrary to claims from entertainment industry groups, Canada now has some of the toughest anti-piracy laws in the world. But, these rightsholder groups want more.  </p>
<p>Some of the requests, such as those put forward by the industry group IIPA, even go beyond what the United States itself is doing, or far beyond internationally agreed standards.</p>
<p>&#8220;[T]he submissions frequently engage in a double standard with the IIPA lobbying against fair use in other countries even though the U.S. has had fair use for decades,&#8221; Geist says.  </p>
<p>&#8220;It also often calls on countries to implement rules that go far beyond their international obligations such as the demands that countries adopt a DMCA-style approach for the WIPO Internet treaties even though those treaties are far more flexible in their requirements.&#8221;</p>
<p>This critique of the USTR&#8217;s annual report is not new as its alleged biased nature has been discussed by various experts in the past. However, as a country, Canada&#8217;s rejection will have an impact, and Professor Geist hopes that other nations will follow suit.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-anonymous-review-2017-170304/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136241
title: Free Tickets Inside Pirate Downloads Aim to Build Bridges
uri: Free-Tickets-Inside-Pirate-Downloads-Aim-to-Build-Bridges
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/WWfDnXU1r3c/
content:
<p><a href="media/dad34aaa.download-keyboard.jpg" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/download-keyboard.jpg"><img src="media/59d6682b.download-keyboard.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/download-keyboard.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="138" class="alignright size-full wp-image-73383"></a>Back in 2003, when P2P networks were the next big thing, music labels were panicking about the large-scale piracy taking place on the Internet. Legal action was their first response (of course it was) but later other tactics were employed.</p>
<p>One of the more unusual tactics involved Madonna, who released fake files on file-sharing networks in order to reach out to pirates. While the idea wasn&#8217;t a fundamentally bad one, the singer made a silly mistake. Instead of appealing to their better nature, Madonna shouted and cursed at pirates, <a href="http://www.mtv.com/news/1471321/madonna-to-pirates-what-the-f-do-you-think-youre-doing/">asking them</a> &#8216;What The F&#8212; Do You Think You&#8217;re Doing?&#8217;</p>
<p>The campaign failed to make a positive impression so when we heard that a movie distributor had launched a similar scheme last month, we were intrigued to hear what they might do differently. We were pleasantly surprised.</p>
<p>After setting up a <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/film-company-launches-fake-kickasstorrents-to-convert-pirates-170305/">KickassTorrents clone</a>, Costa Rica-based film distributor Romaly seeded fake torrents, each containing a trailer of the movie plus a gentle anti-piracy message.</p>
<p>&#8220;The time this took to download is not enough when compared to the hours of effort it took to produce this movie. You deserve to see it in the theater. That&#8217;s why we are giving you a double ticket for a cinema in Costa Rica,&#8221; it read.</p>
<p>Instead of launching a Madonna-inspired tirade, Romaly had given movie fans a chance to watch their chosen movie on the big screen, for free. It was a new twist on an old idea and it was largely well received.</p>
<p>This week TorrentFreak caught up with Christhian Fuentes from advertising agency <a href="http://orsoncr.com/">Orson</a>. He&#8217;s the campaign&#8217;s Creative Director and was happy to explain why being nice to pirates is better than treating them like thieves.  </p>
<p>&#8220;Piracy of all kind is a very common practice in Costa Rica and criminalizing approaches are old tactics that are not very effective in achieving results,&#8221; Fuentes explained. </p>
<p>&#8220;We wanted a positive campaign to reinforce the idea that this is a fight we all are part of: as an industry, as a consumer or buyer, or in media, or in politics. In the end we all enjoy watching movies, so let’s do it legally.&#8221;</p>
<p>Fuentes says that his agency was approached by movie distributor Romaly at the end of 2016 who spoke to them about the &#8220;not so positive&#8221; piracy situation in Costa Rica. The companies then worked as a team to formulate a unique response.</p>
<p>As mentioned earlier, the campaign involves a site called LegalTorrents, but it is clearly designed to look like the now defunct but former market-leading torrent site, KickassTorrents.</p>
<p><center><img src="media/35b52249.legakatfake.png" data-original-source="https://torrentfreak.com/images/legakatfake.png" width="1155" height="687" class="aligncenter size-large"></center></p>
<p>However, KAT wasn&#8217;t chosen simply because it was the biggest site. The brand was particularly popular locally and the fact that it used a Costa Rican .CR domain was also noted during the data gathering stage.</p>
<p>&#8220;We did a lot of research and the data showed us that [KAT] was one of the main torrent catalogs used in Costa Rica. In order to work, the idea had to be precise in those kinds of details. We began with a free and public template, did some design modifications, and came up with our own logo,&#8221; Fuentes adds.</p>
<p>While some pirates might take offense at their favorite site being mimicked in this manner, the agency says that its aims were positive all along.</p>
<p>&#8220;We do not intend to directly attack any torrent website. Like I said earlier, this is not a criminalizing approach. The campaign is a direct action to create contact with potential movie viewers in order to raise awareness, and then the idea should create a conversation, which is happening right now.&#8221;</p>
<p>In our earlier report we noted that most if not all of the fake torrents on the LegalTorrents site had no seeds. According to Fuentes, however, we were probably just unlucky with our timing. Since the campaign is fluid and the site is being constantly updated with the latest movie releases from Romaly, it&#8217;s likely that an update was in progress. We carried out some tests this week and everything worked just fine.</p>
<p>The torrents are proving quite popular but not all downloaders are taking up the offer of free tickets. It&#8217;s not clear why but it&#8217;s certainly possible that torrent users are cautious when offered free stuff inside a fake torrent since that rarely ends well. Still, the agency believes that simply reaching out to pirates is having the desired effect.</p>
<p>&#8220;Feedback is positive. Far from feeling fooled, people have contacted us telling us about how creative the campaign is and complimenting us on the fresh approach. And they are thankful when they receive tickets,&#8221; Fuentes says.</p>
<p>&#8220;This is a long-term strategy. We know piracy is a never-ending fight, so isolated efforts won’t make a big difference in the long term. Legal Torrents will continue as new movies get released. But it should be part of a bigger strategy where more national (and international) actors join,&#8221; he concludes.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-anonymous-review-2017-170304/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136336
title: New Automated DMCA Notices Hit Movie Pirates With $300 Fines
uri: New-Automated-DMCA-Notices-Hit-Movie-Pirates-With-300-Fines
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/jzysuchzdAg/
content:
<p><img src="media/f2bfe741.pirate-running.jpg" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/pirate-running.jpg" alt="" width="222" height="204" class="alignright size-full wp-image-78717">Many Hollywood insiders see online piracy as a major threat, but very few are willing to target file-sharers with lawsuits or settlement demands.</p>
<p>Voltage Pictures was one of the pioneers on this front, at least in the US. Together with their legal team and BitTorrent tracking partner, the filmmakers have sued tens of thousands of people since 2010. </p>
<p>Initially, this was a very lucrative practice, as rightsholders were able to join many defendants in a single lawsuit. However, nowadays courts are more reserved, which is one of the reasons they started to look for alternatives.</p>
<p>One interesting development on this front is the company &#8220;<a href="https://rightsenforcement.com/">Rights Enforcement</a>.&#8221; This outfit tracks down BitTorrent pirates, but instead of taking them to court they send automated &#8216;fines&#8217; via DMCA notices, asking for a <a href="http://antonelli-law.com/Rightsenforcement_DMCA_2.php">$300 settlement</a>.  </p>
<p>By using the DMCA notice process, the rightsholders avoid expensive lawsuits. It also makes the settlement process easier to scale, since they can send out tens of thousands of &#8216;fines&#8217; at once with limited resources.</p>
<p>While these schemes are not new, Rightscorp and CEG TEK have done the same, Rights Enforcement has a nasty sting in store for accused pirates.</p>
<p>The company is operated by lawyer Carl Crowell, who is best known for his work with various notorious copyright trolls. This includes the aforementioned Voltage Pictures, which filed lawsuits for several movies such as Dallas Buyers Club and The Hurt Locker. </p>
<p>These ties appear to be still intact, as the Rights Enforcement company lists several movies on its <a href="https://rightsenforcement.com/clients">client list</a>, many of which are linked to Voltage Pictures. Dallas Buyers Club is on there for example, as well as I.T., Mr. Church, Fathers &#038; Daughters, Pay the Ghost, The Cobbler, and Good Kill.</p>
<p><center><strong>Rights Enforcement Website</strong><br></br></center><center><img src="media/2231627f.RE-e1489137730402.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/RE-e1489137730402.png" alt="" width="600" height="355" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-136339"></center></p>
<p>The client list suggests that that the makers of these movies are now trying to extract settlement money from alleged file-sharers through automated settlements, because this is cheaper and possibly more profitable. </p>
<p>This is also what Rights Enforcement suggests on its website:</p>
<p>&#8220;Online infringement, including &#8216;peer-to-peer&#8217; copying of material across the Internet is pervasive. Too often parties and rights holders are forced into the expensive forum of the courts,&#8221; the outfit writes. </p>
<p>&#8220;With filing fees of $400 and copyright damages in some jurisdictions reaching $150,000 for a single act, we work to permit rights holders to notify and address infringers and resolve their claims in an efficient and cost effective manner.&#8221;</p>
<p>The &#8216;sting&#8217; with Rights Enforcement, is that they have a team of known &#8216;troll&#8217; lawyers <a href="https://rightsenforcement.com/about-us">lined up</a> to wave the legal stick. In other words, if targeted subscribers are unwilling to pay but mistakenly identify themselves, they can still be taken to court.</p>
<p>They are not shy to use this threat either. In their automated DMCA settlement notices Rights Enforcement <a href="/images/crowell.txt">warns</a> that a failure to cooperate can lead to legal action. </p>
<p>&#8220;You may consider this a notice of potential lawsuit, a demand for the infringing activity to terminate, and a demand for damages from the actual infringer,&#8221; the automated email reads.</p>
<p>&#8220;We invite your voluntary cooperation in assisting us with this matter, identifying the infringer, and ensuring that this activity stops. Should the infringing activity continue we may file a civil lawsuit seeking judicial relief.&#8221;</p>
<p>It&#8217;s currently unknown who does the BitTorrent tracking, but according to defense lawyer Robert Cashman, it&#8217;s likely that the German outfit Guardaley is involved. </p>
<p>TorrentFreak spoke with Cashman, who has represented several accused pirates in the past. He <a href="https://torrentlawyer.com/2017/03/09/rights-enforcement-carl-crowell-dmca-copyright-infringement-notices/">is warning</a> people against Rights Enforcement, describing it as a &#8220;monster&#8221; and the &#8220;evil twin&#8221; of settlement outfit CEG TEK. </p>
<p>The lawyer believes that the evidence used by Rights Enforcement might lead to inaccurate accusations, which Rights Enforcement will pursue in an aggressive fashion. </p>
<p>&#8220;So in essence, Right Enforcement will be a monster. It’ll be an evil version of what CEG-TEK strove to become,&#8221; Cashman says.</p>
<p>The link with CEG TEK comes up because it stopped sending out settlement requests recently. The company, which represented a current Rights Enforcement client <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/london-fallen-pirates-get-automated-300-fines-160609/">in the recent past</a>, now states on its website that it&#8217;s no longer offering settlement services. That said, we haven&#8217;t been able to find a direct link between the two outfits. </p>
<p>On a similar note, Rights Enforcement &#8220;boss&#8221; Carl Crowell was previously <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/rightscorp-retains-dallas-buyers-club-copyright-troll-lawyer-150930/">hired by another settlement firm</a>, Rightscorp. While this may have served as inspiration, we haven&#8217;t seen any direct ties. </p>
<p>One thing&#8217;s for sure, though. Given the outspokenness of Crowell and the aggressive tactics he and other partners have employed in the past, this is certainly not the last time we&#8217;ll hear of Rights Enforcement.</p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-anonymous-review-2017-170304/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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feed_id: http://torrentfreak.com/?p=136317
title: Future Shock: UK Teenager Jailed For 5 Years For Downloading One Movie
uri: Future-Shock-UK-Teenager-Jailed-For-5-Years-For-Downloading-One-Movie
url: http://feed.torrentfreak.com/~r/Torrentfreak/~3/Gfm6jwlu_Z4/
content:
<p><a href="media/a035d672.piratkeyb-e1476968827887.png" data-original-source="http://feed.torrentfreak.com/images/piratkeyb-e1476968827887.png"><img src="media/0a6858fb.piratkeyb-e1476968827887.png" data-original-source="http://torrentfreak.com/images/piratkeyb-e1476968827887.png" alt="" width="222" height="157" class="alignright size-full wp-image-108110"></a>It&#8217;s January 2018 and after enjoying a meal with her family, recent school-leaver Rachel Owen walks to the mat to pick up an envelope addressed to her father. It&#8217;s from the family&#8217;s Internet provider and she opens it expecting to see the latest special offers.</p>
<p>Instead, she&#8217;s confronted with a nasty surprise. Her ISP says that it has handed over her father&#8217;s personal details to a foreign copyright holder after it monitored the family&#8217;s IP address sharing a movie online.</p>
<p>Having read that copyright holders usually settle these complaints for a few hundred pounds, Rachel comes clean with her angry father. Five months later in May 2018, the inevitable letter arrives.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s from a UK-registered company, with little to no assets, operating from a virtual office in London. In the past, these so-called copyright trolls had used firms of solicitors, but with the Solicitors Regulatory Authority paying close attention, it&#8217;s now safer to conduct business outside their jurisdiction and from offices that effectively do not exist.</p>
<p>The letter claims that the family&#8217;s IP address was tracked using the latest &#8220;forensic&#8221; technology. As expected, there&#8217;s an offer to settle with cash, but not for the £500 Rachel had been expecting.</p>
<p>Instead, the company is demanding £5,000 for the massive &#8220;risk of loss&#8221; Rachel&#8217;s download had subjected them to. It becomes evident that this wording has been carefully extracted from the Digital Economy Act passed by the UK government in the latter half of 2017. It&#8217;s a clever but devious tactic.</p>
<p>Under that legislation, which passed through parliament <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/ten-years-in-jail-for-uk-internet-pirates-how-the-new-bill-reads-161204/">despite many warnings</a>, anyone merely exposing a copyright holder to a mere risk of loss can be jailed for up to ten years. Lucky then, that this copyright holder is choosing to settle.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, neither Rachel nor her family has £5,000. Rachel&#8217;s job at an insurance company call center brings in just £5.55 an hour. Her father, who works as a driver, has a mortgage, credit card bills, and an overdraft. £5,000 is out of the question. So, together, they decide to write back to the copyright trolls to inform them they cannot pay.</p>
<p>Another six weeks passes and in June 2018 a new letter drops onto the mat. The copyright trolls note the refusal to pay and offer another month to settle. After that, all of the evidence will be passed to the police and a criminal prosecution will take place. For a naive and otherwise law-abiding teenager who downloaded a single movie, this is unfathomable.</p>
<p>However, thanks to the Digital Economy Act, which criminalizes anyone who violates a copyright holders&#8217; distribution rights, this isn&#8217;t an idle threat. Ignoring warnings <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/uk-govt-refuses-to-back-down-over-criminalization-of-file-sharers-170306/">from organizations such as the Open Rights Group</a>, the government refused to put in a threshold of criminality back in 2017. This means that after sharing just a single movie online, Rachel committed a criminal offense.</p>
<p>No one really thought a case like this would end up at trial. No one thought that a teenager like Rachel could end up with a jail sentence for sharing a single movie. That said, everyone should have anticipated the venom of copyright trolls hell-bent on ensuring that people in Rachel&#8217;s position settle future claims without putting up a fight.</p>
<p>During Rachel&#8217;s trial the evidence against her began to build. Someone, no one knows who, recorded the sci-fi movie in a theater and uploaded it to a torrent site. Rachel had no part in that but circumstantial evidence against her began to build. The trolls know this game well and pushed all the right buttons. Content creators need to be protected, they argued time and again.</p>
<p>Rachel told the court that when she jumped on the torrent she thought there were lots of other people seeding already &#8211; she just wanted a quick movie. However, according to the copyright trolls&#8217; tracking company, she was among the initial handful of sharers. These people, they argued, were effectively a torrent swarm conspiracy who kickstarted an unstoppable and damaging chain of events.</p>
<p>Rachel, through her state-appointed lawyer (who was competent but had no specific copyright expertise), was powerless to argue otherwise. The government&#8217;s promise that the Digital Economy Act wouldn&#8217;t target kids in a bedroom seemed a distant memory and things were clearly getting out of hand.</p>
<p>Within 24 hours of appearing online this independent movie, in which the copyright holders had reportedly &#8220;invested heavily&#8221;, was apparently shared illegally in more than 50 countries, the court heard. Faced with a public who had already seen the movie, a planned cinema roll-out across Europe had to be abandoned, a somber prosecution lawyer explained. It was suggested that dozens of people lost their jobs.</p>
<p>Rachel and her faceless and apparently &#8220;still-on-the-run co-conspirators&#8221; were entirely to blame, the copyright trolls&#8217; lawyer argued. The teenager, who had no ability to argue against the outrageous claims and should never have been in a criminal court at all, stood bewildered as more flooded in. </p>
<p>The trolls said that the initial seeders of the movie, from where all other copies of the movie were reportedly made, were responsible for at least 750,000 subsequent downloads on torrent networks alone. Direct downloads and streams were harder to track but they easily numbered 250,000, it was claimed.</p>
<p>In all, an estimated one million downloads priced at £7 each by the trolls were rounded down to £4 million in lost sales. This figure, the trolls said, warranted punishment right at the top end of the scale. Thanks to the Digital Economy Act passed in late 2017, that&#8217;s now 10 years in prison.</p>
<p>The judge took things seriously. He had to, the wording of the law was crystal clear. While there was no intention on Rachel&#8217;s part to get rich, her guilty plea under the Digital Economy Act indicated that she &#8220;knew or had reason to believe that [her actions would] cause loss or expose the rights holder to a risk of loss in money.&#8221; It didn&#8217;t matter that she thought she was just downloading a free movie.</p>
<p>With a five-year sentence handed down, the judge commented that given the wide-scale loss to copyright holders and few arguments in defense, he&#8217;d had little opportunity to further reduce Rachel&#8217;s punishment. With good behavior, she&#8217;d be out on license in half the time, but possibly not in advance of her 21st birthday. </p>
<p>While in prison, Rachel had time to think. If only she&#8217;d heard of the Open Rights Group&#8217;s efforts back in March 2017 to introduce a threshold of criminality into the Digital Economy Bill. She could have helped to <a href="https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/digital-economy-bill-hub/10-years-for-file-sharing-email-the-government">persuade Government minister Jo Johnson</a> to do the right thing. That would&#8217;ve protected small-time and indeed naive infringers while ensuring that commercial infringers would still be held to account.</p>
<p>&#8212;</p>
<p><em>Hindsight is a wonderful but rare thing. Act today by supporting the <a href="https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/digital-economy-bill-hub/10-years-for-file-sharing-email-the-government">Open Rights Group&#8217;s initiative</a> to have the government determine a sensible threshold for criminal liability in the Digital Economy Act.</em></p>
<p>Source: <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/">TF</a>, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102/">torrent sites</a> and  <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-anonymous-review-2017-170304/">ANONYMOUS VPN services</a>.</p>
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