Courts all around the world have ordered Internet providers to block subscriber access to the torrent site, and the end is still not in sight.

Within a few days, a new deadline for five UK and five Dutch Internet providers passes. This means that millions more will be unable to access The Pirate Bay, at least, that is the plan.

Last week The Pirate Bay team responded to the blockades by adding a new IP-address. The new location was setup to make it easier for people to start their own dedicated proxy sites, but it also allows blocked Pirate Bay visitors to gain access to the site.

Instead of the normal address they simply go to 194.71.107.80, bypassing the court order – for the time being at least.

The new IP-address represents a new thorn in the side of Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN, who quickly asked ISPs to censor that too. Unfortunately for them the providers refused to do so, so the group had to go to court once again last week to get the added IP-address blocked as well.

Right before the weekend BREIN succeeded with the court ordering an ex-parte injunction for the new address. However, according to comments coming out of The Pirate Bay, this could just be the start of an extended game of whac-a-mole.

“Let me get the next IP-address lined up,” a Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak. “We have hundreds, so let’s see many times they will respond,” he added.

We were told that if the new IP-address is blocked again, they will simply add a new one. This means that BREIN would have to file for another ex-parte injunction, a process that may repeat itself hundreds of times.

The Pirate Bay insider did emphasize that the new IP wasn’t meant for people to bypass the blocks directly, but to make it easier and more safe to create proxy sites. In this regard, it is irrelevant whether the IP-address is blocked or not.

However, it’s well known that The Pirate Bay isn’t averse to a little dueling with anti-piracy outfits, so they’re going to play along.

“Now that I know it’s annoying to BREIN, of course we’ll add more IPs. Every time they get an order, we’ll add a new one, for the next year or so,” TorrentFreak was told.

The result is an almost endless IP-address whac-a-mole.

The Pirate Bay blockades are a good example of how hard it is to completely get a website offline. Even if all Pirate Bay domains and IP-addresses are blocked there are plenty of other ways to access the torrent site, including hundreds of proxy sites.

At the same time, the blockades make The Pirate Bay front page news. As we’ve seen before, this can result in a healthy traffic boost for the deviant torrent site. That begs the question of whether these censorship attempts aren’t doing more ‘harm’ than ‘good’ for copyright holders.

Source: Pirate Bay Ready For Perpetual IP-Address Whac-A-Mole

Safe House is the most downloaded movie this week.

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

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent

The site, launched late last year, exposes what people behind an IP-address have downloaded using BitTorrent. This data was gathered from public BitTorrent trackers, and the founders released it to show how much information can be found on BitTorrent users who don’t hide their IP-address.

The site’s founders inform TorrentFreak that since this mission has now been accomplished, they have stopped adding new info to the site. However, existing data is still online and that allows us to “out” a group of corporate BitTorrent pirates once more.

In recent weeks Microsoft has taken a strong position against copyright infringers. They censored Pirate Bay links in Windows Live Messenger, funded a startup that aims to kill BitTorrent traffic, and a few days ago it was revealed that they are the most active sender of DMCA takedown notices to Google.

Clearly, Microsoft is anti piracy. But would they also prevent their employees from using Microsoft office connections to download pirated films through BitTorrent? Let’s find out.

The methodology is easy. Look up a range of IP-addresses assigned to Microsoft and enter those into the search form on YouHaveDownloaded one by one. While we expected that it might take a while to find one, we already had a handful of offenders after two dozen tries.

Below are a few of our findings, all downloads that are linked to Microsoft’s office in Sammamish, Washington (or Seattle). Interestingly, most of the hits we ran into are movies such as “The Debt”, “Bordertown” and lesser known “Blind”.

No listing of pirated files would be complete without an adult film. We had plenty to choose from, but Rocco’s Psycho Love was one of the better ones.

In Microsoft’s office in Arlington, Virginia, (or Charlotte) there are also quite a few hits, including some educational and inspirational books.

The above shows that despite Microsoft’s anti-piracy efforts, there are plenty of employees downloading files though BitTorrent, and not just legal files either.

Of course this is hardly a surprise. In companies with thousands of employees there will always be people who use BitTorrent for illicit purposes. And in tech companies it’s probably even more common.

Microsoft is in good company also.

Previously we were able to show that unauthorized downloads occur even in the most unexpected of places, from the palace of the French President, via the Church of God, to the RIAA and the US House of Representatives.

Source: Busted: Microsoft Harbors BitTorrent Pirates

Thompson was involved in movie piracy, but not just with any old group. Wicked1, as he was better known online, was a member of Centropy, the world’s leading movie piracy group.

Today, 7 years on, Thompson is sharing with TorrentFreak readers an excerpt from his forthcoming book, This is the Scene.

This is the Scene

My name was Wicked1 and I was a member of Centropy. For people not around in the early 2000’s and/or think the pinnacle of movies comes from the likes of IMAGiNE or aXXo, allow me this chance to correct you.

Centropy (CTP), when we existed, was the biggest release group in the world. Most people tend to think of ISO games groups as the leaders of The Scene, but there has always been more than one group operating at a given time. During my time, there was Razor1911, Fairlight, and Deviance. There was only ever one group the quality of Centropy in the movie scene.

We were the pioneers in how to pirate a movie in theaters. Our releases of The Matrix Reloaded, and Star Wars Episode 2 were part of the reason why one of the most common phrases in the pirating of new release movies was “I’ll wait for the Centropy”. The quality of our releases is virtually unmatched to this day.

Through our former DivX release partners in Deity, and later under our own spinoff, Brutus, we also released some of the largest DVD copies of movies ever, such as Lord of the Rings The Two Towers. Our most famous release was the March 1st release of The Return of the King, almost 2 and a half months before it came out on DVD.

What was my job in the two years I was a member of CTP? Was I the guy sitting in the movie theaters or the guy who uploaded movies to our encoding boxes? No, I was the guy who supplied computer hardware to the guys who sat in movie theaters and the person who found the suppliers who gave us the vast majority of our movies.

I was also one of the guys in The Scene who people would come to with fast business Internet connections to help set up topsites for Centropy, like a site run out of Michigan in a Comcast datacenter.

I became a member of Centropy in 2002 after having been a member of some very different groups. First, there was A-Team, a scrubby movie release group. Our only claim to anything was a subpar release of the first Harry Potter movie.

After bouncing around a few other groups like Esoteric and Obus, I ended up helping the TV group FFN pay for the internet connection for one of its cappers. It got me a leech account on some of the better sites around then, and it helped me join the racing group Enrage.

The leader of Enrage, a guy who went by the name of Blackjack, was someone fairly high in the Scene. After I had left Esoteric, he came to me one day telling me that Centropy was looking for someone to help keep their supplier happy. Within two months, I was supplying hardware, money, and bringing in new potential suppliers. Random topsites like AKSISO, a gigabit site in the Czech Republic, decided to give me site-op privileges in hopes that Centropy would become an affiliate of the site.

Things were great for me as a pirate; I had access to whatever I wanted and was a member of some of the biggest groups that have ever existed. Then Operation Fastlink happened.

Operation Fastlink was a multi-year, joint-operation run by the United States Department of Justice and the Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section of INTERPOL designed to take out the groups Fairlight, Kalisto, Echelon, ProjectX, and Class.

I had been around somewhat in 2001 during Operation Buccaneer, but that had very minimal effects on the world of piracy. Fastlink was different, as Fairlight (FLT) and their associated acts were some of the largest groups and some of the most secure in all of warez.

I woke up the morning of April 22, 2004, to what could pretty much be called chaos on IRC [Internet Relay Chat]. The private Centropy IRC server was down, and nobody from the group was on Efnet or Linknet, and virtually all of my sites were down for security reasons.

When I finally got in touch with a few of my other Scene buddies, they had told me that FLT and most of their sites had been busted and that I should probably lay low for a while. The fact that FLT had been busted didn’t bother me all that much; what bothered me was that their two US sites, Optical Illusion and DOH, were both sites I was on and both had been busted.

Like most rational people who are scared of going to prison would do, I freaked out and destroyed my hard drives and burned every burned CD and DVD I had in a random field outside of my town. For the next two months, I disappeared from piracy until my friends korax and Dact told me about this cool gigabit US topsite run by a guy named Griffen.

That topsite’s name was CHUD, or Can’t Hold us Down. Griffen and his site would later come back to haunt us in the biggest way imaginable….

—————————-

Want to hear more? We certainly do. Matthew is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to raise funding to continue work on his forthcoming book, This is the Scene.

The campaign page and accompanying video are available here.

Source: I Was a Member of Centropy, The World’s Leading Movie Piracy Group

Citizens of the DPRK are routinely deprived access to any and all information, unless of course it has been created, or authorized, by the regime.

The end result is a largely brainwashed society which is fed an alternative version of reality in order for it to be manipulated and controlled. But according to a new survey, developments in technology are giving citizens of the DPRK new access to information and insights into life beyond their borders.

The report, titled A Quiet Opening surveyed North Korean refugees and those who managed to travel outside the country. What it shows is that increasing numbers are gaining access to pirated media from outside the hermit nation, with potentially life-changing consequences.

While devices such as standard radios and televisions are manufactured so that citizens (at least those who can afford them) can only listen to state-run radio stations, imported devices are able to pick up signals from South Korea, China and beyond, although receiving these broadcasts is a crime.

With Internet unavailable to all but a tiny percentage of the elite, citizens of North Korea are obtaining their information through other means, notably file-sharing devices such as DVDs, MP3 and MP4 players, and USB drives.

Through these means they are being increasingly exposed to pirated TV shows and pop music leaking from neighboring South Korea. What they gain from these files is an alternative take on the world which challenges the propaganda of their leaders.

“I was told when I was young that South Koreans are very poor, but the South Korean dramas proved that just isn’t the case,” explains a 31-year-old who managed to escape North Korea in 2010.

Although there is no Internet, computers are legal in the country and are essential for shifting data to and from USB sticks and other media playback devices. What the report shows is that since computers are still rare, people buy blank devices and use their social networks to acquire pirate South Korean media from people with PC access.

“The MP4 [player] was empty but I received movies and music from friends who had computers and then I watched and listened to them. The battery was charged with electricity and it was portable so young people liked it,” says a 23-year-old former Pyongyang resident.

And it appears that the unlawful sharing of files is widespread, particularly among the youth.

“About 70-80 percent of people that have MP3/4 players are young people,” a 44-year-old male who left DPRK in 2010 reports. “When you do a crackdown of MP3/4 players among high school and university students, you see that 100 percent of them have South Korean music.”

In North Korea possession of unauthorized TV shows or music is a very dangerous affair. Depending on how the offense is viewed, punishments can range from 3 months unpaid labor to 5 years in a prison camp if the media originates from South Korea.

But despite the massive risks, young people in the DPRK are apparently prepared to defy the regime by consuming unauthorized media anyway, something they have in common with the US youth who share files in the face of $150,000 statutory damages.

As we read yesterday, the introduction of tougher and tougher laws to combat the spread of pirate material in Sweden also failed to reach the desired effect when they conflicted with social norms.

Of course, the situation in North Korea goes way beyond anything experienced in the US or Europe, but the battles being fought center around the same thing – the free flow of information. Access to information will eventually set the North Koreans free and if that can be achieved through file-sharing, it will be the activity’s biggest achievement to date, bar none.

The report can be downloaded here (pdf)

Source: Illegal File-Sharing Chips Away At North Korean Propaganda

Behind the scenes Megaupload negotiated with the Department of Justice and other parties to allow these users to temporarily access their files. When these negotiations failed last month the court was asked to provide a solution, but in response it instructed the parties to reach an agreement on their own.

However, a month has passed and absolutely no progress has been made on the issue according to a document filed today by the EFF.

Representing Kyle Goodwin, a sports reporter who used Megaupload to store work-related files, the EFF has filed a motion in which it demands that the court finds a workable solution for the return of his data. Goodwin already requested the court to assist in a document filed early April, but he is tired of waiting.

According to the motion, the seizure of the data and domains violate the constitutional rights of many innocent Megaupload users.

“In seizing domain names and executing the search warrant at Carpathia, the government took constructive possession of third parties’ data, then abandoned the data under circumstances in which it was both inaccessible and potentially subject to destruction,” the motion reads.

“It is equally obvious that the seizure and continued denial of access violates Mr. Goodwin’s constitutional rights. Under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, the government was obligated to execute the searches and seizures in a manner that reasonably protected the rights of third parties to access and retrieval.”

The motion also emphasizes that this request is not just about a single Megaupload user, there are many more who find themselves in a similar position.

“To be clear, however, there is more at stake here than Mr. Goodwin’s data. The government also seized the property of an unknown but significant number of other people along with Mr. Goodwin’s property. If the Court does not act, all of those people also face years of deprivation, if not permanent loss.”

The EFF further points out that the government has gone too far in its actions.

“What is worse, the government’s procedure and legal posture in this case appears to reflect a broader disregard for the effects its increasing use of domain and other digital seizure mechanisms can have on the innocent users of cloud computing services.”

The motion concludes by asking the court to appoint an independent third-party to investigate the exact requirements and options for a user data retrieval.

Aside from asking the court to come up with a solution for Megaupload users, the EFF suggests that the court should prescribe procedures and standards on how similar data seizures should be handled in the future.

Source: Megaupload User Asks Court To Order Return Of His Data

Quite simply, rightsholders are having problems getting it right. Check out these ridiculous takedowns from some of the world’s leading entertainment companies against sites that have done nothing wrong.

Warner Brothers: Wrath of the Titans

When a movie’s either just about to come out or already doing the rounds, people want to find out about it. Amazingly, Warner and their anti-piracy partners managed to undermine their own marketing campaign for Wrath of the Titans with DMCAs sent to Google.

Through this DMCA takedown Warner requested the removal of the IMDb listing for their own movie.

But it didn’t stop there. Warner also asked Google to delist the official trailer on Apple along with the ones on Hulu, The Guardian and FilmoFilia. In addition, the studio asked for an article on BBC America to be removed along with a listing on a site that helps people find theaters to watch the movie.

IMDb

As can be seen here, Warner issued a takedown for the IMDb listing for its own movie Happy Feet Two. They were in good company since Paramount Pictures, NBC Universal and other rights holders did the same for IMDb information pages covering their content.

Hulu, Crackle

Hulu has also become an unlikely target. In addition to the Warner takedown mentioned above, UFC owner Zuffa also asked Google to delist its own content on the authorized video site.

Sony-owned Crackle was picked on too, when Warner Bros. asked Google to delist an information page about its movie Hall Pass.

Other news and information sites

Bizarrely, news sites are being hit with takedowns too. In addition to the Warner instance mentioned above, the RIAA asked Google to delist a review of the album Own The Night published on The Guardian. The artist behind the album is Lady Antebellum, signed to RIAA-member Capitol Records.

Even more worrying, the RIAA asked Google to delist Last.fm’s entire Electro Pop section because they thought it carried a pirate copy of All About Tonight by Pixie Lott.

Warner also reappeared later on, asking Google to delist a page on news site NME which lists information on the latest movies, which at the time included information on the movie Hall Pass. The same page on NME was targeted on several other occasions, including by anti-piracy company DtecNet on behalf of Lionsgate, who had info on The Hunger Games delisted.

Hollywood Reporter didn’t fare much better either. Sony Pictures asked Google to swing the banhammer against the popular news site after it published an article called “Trent Reznor Releases Six Free Tracks From ‘Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ Soundtrack” and Sony mistook it for a DVDRIP.

But as soon as Sony’s piracy fears on the first ‘Dragon Tattoo’ movie had subsided they were back as strong as ever with the sequel. This time the sinner was Wikipedia who dared to put up an information page on the movie The Girl Who Played With Fire. Luckily Sony were on hand to ask Google to delist the page.

Although just a tiny percentage of the thousands of correct takedowns issued, the above shows that overbroad filters and poorly considered notices can impact businesses who shouldn’t be affected by them, studios and people who merely report on their content alike.

Fortunately, Google says it does not comply with all takedown requests, rejecting a few percent and reinstating others at later dates, including some of the above.

Source: Copyright Holders Punish Themselves With Crazy DMCA Takedowns

To give the public insight into the scope and nature of this process Google has decided to publish all takedown requests online as part of their transparency report.

“Specifically, we’re disclosing the number of requests we get from copyright owners and the organizations that represent them to remove Google Search results because they allegedly link to infringing content,” Google states.

“We’re starting with search because we remove more results in response to copyright removal notices than for any other reason. So we’re providing information about who sends us copyright removal notices, how often, on behalf of which copyright owners and for which websites.”

The data shows that Google receives by far the most takedown requests for fellow search engine FilesTube. During the last month they disabled access to 43,469 links after being notified by 233 copyright holders. During the last year Google disabled access to 389,512 FilesTube links, twice as many when compared to the 147,318 links from runner-up Torrentz.eu.

The above is interesting because FilesTube, in common with many other sites in the top list, honors DMCA takedown requests itself. FilesTube owner Arkadiusz Senko told TorrentFreak that he is surprised to see his site at the top of the list, and confirmed that his company also works directly with copyright holders to remove infringing content.

In fact, FilesTube informs TorrentFreak that they remove 2,000,000 links per month from their search index, which is more than Google. These links are removed within 24-hours and FilesTube also adds several filters per day to make sure content with specific infringing file names doesn’t later reappear.

While many of the takedown requests are valid, Google’s data reveals that in some cases the DMCA is abused to apply broad and unwarranted censorship. In this notice, for example, NBC Universal asked Google to block access to a search on FilesTube for the word “battleships,” a term that does not exclusively link to NBC content.

Looking further down the list of targeted domains we see The Pirate Bay listed in 13th place. And because of the Pirate Bay blockades in the UK, the Netherlands and elsewhere, several reverse proxy sites including those of the UK and Dutch Pirate Party are also listed.

Steve Wilson, head of Pirate Party UK’s IT Team, responded by pointing out that removing Google’s search results doesn’t do anything to prevent the actual content from being shared.

“Obviously the removal of search results does not remove the linked content and all of that content is still searchable through the Pirate Bay’s own search page. The linked content itself doesn’t relate directly to material owned by the copyright holder either, but is rather a further link to content held across many computers and accessible via a peer-to-peer network,” Wilson told TorrentFreak.

Google’s data further reveals the Microsoft is the most active copyright holder when it comes to sending takedown notices. The software giant asked Google to block access to a total of 2,544,209 links during the last year, and is followed by NBC Universal and the RIAA with 985,995 and 416,731 targeted links respectively.

One of the reasons why Google made the data public is to aid the ongoing discussions on how online piracy should be addressed. And as we will reveal later today, there’s plenty of discussion possible, especially about some borderline insane takedown requests that reveal how copyright holders sometimes shoot themselves in the foot.

Source: FilesTube Tops Google Copyright Takedown List

This downward spiral is confirmed by a recent Sandvine report which reveals that BitTorrent traffic is now responsible for 11.3% of all U.S. Internet traffic during peak hours, compared to 17.3% last year. Although these numbers don’t take into account that absolute traffic has increased, it’s clear that there’s little to no growth in BitTorrent use.

However, this decline appears to be unique to the U.S. When we look at other regions a different pattern can be observed.

In Europe for example, BitTorrent traffic still accounts for 20.32% of all Internet traffic during peak hours, while eDonkey adds another 9.39% to the P2P total. During the last 18 months the share of P2P traffic nearly quadrupled, and this increase is even larger in absolute traffic.

According to Sandvine, the absence of legal alternatives is one of the reasons for these high P2P traffic shares.

“We see higher levels of P2P filesharing than in many other regions, at least partially due to geographical licensing challenges that restrict the availability of legitimate Real-Time Entertainment services.”

A similar trend is visible in the Asia-Pacific region where BitTorrent now accounts for nearly half of all upstream traffic and 27.19% of the aggregate Internet traffic during peak hours. The P2P streaming service PPStream and the Chinese file-sharing client Thunder add another 6.36% and 4.62% to the P2P total.

So, while BitTorrent traffic is stabilizing in the U.S. as its share of Internet traffic drops, the P2P protocol is still hugely popular in other parts of the world.

Sandvine’s suggestion that a lack of legal alternatives is one of the explanations for this seems plausible. As we reported earlier this week, the latest episodes of series such as Game of Thrones are widely pirated on BitTorrent in countries such as Australia and the Netherlands due to airing delays.

In the U.S. on the other hand, the availability of legal content has flourished in recent years. To illustrate this, Sandvine reports that one-third (32.9%) of all downstream traffic during peak hours is now generated by Netflix subscribers. In addition, Hulu has doubled its share in the last year to 1.8%.

The above seems to suggest that due to these alternatives, people are less inclined to pirate.

The MPAA is slowly starting to realize that consumers are not all out to steal content, they simply want to consume.

“I believe it’s critical to find solutions to the challenges facing both these consumers and the people who create the content. Because at the end of the day, this discussion is about consumers and by consumers who love TV shows and movies. They want to be able to access them quickly and safely online,” the MPAA’s Marc Miller wrote yesterday.

True words, but Miller continues with a classic misunderstanding. “No business in the world can compete with ‘free’,” he notes.

As it turns out, the entertainment industry can definitely compete with free, up to a certain point. The crucial part is to remove all the artificial barriers. Release delays for TV and movies drive people towards BitTorrent piracy, just as DRM is an incentive to pirate rather than a deterrent.

The challenge for the entertainment industry in the years to come is not to invent ways to stop piracy but to make it less attractive, by ensuring that consumers get timely access to the content they want independent of their location, and on demand.

Source: BitTorrent Traffic Booms Due to “Licensing Challenges”

Founded just three years ago in 2009, KickAssTorrents has shown that it’s serious about becoming a leading torrent site player. Of course, that has its drawbacks too.

The site’s increasing profile has caused it to appear in numerous MPAA, RIAA and government reports, in the US and elsewhere. News today reveals that the authorities in Italy have been watching the site for some time.

According to a report coming out of the police department with responsibilities for tackling cybercrime, KickAssTorrents will soon be subjected to a nationwide ISP blockade.

Translated as “Financial Guard”, the Guardia di Finanza (GdF) is a department under Italy’s Minister of Economy and Finance. Part of the Italian Armed Forces, GdF has in recent years been involved in many file-sharing investigations, most recently against KickAssTorrents.

Operation ‘Last Paradise’ has just concluded with the public prosecutor of the Sardinian capital Cagliari granting an “order of inhibition” which requires the country’s ISPs to cease providing access to the site. Similar orders were previously granted against The Pirate Bay and the now-defunct BTjunkie.

“This is another memorable dark day for digital piracy in Italy. After starting with The Pirate Bay in 2008 and the final closing of the doors at BTjunkie in February 2012, the Guardia di Finanza has targeted another super-pirate platform, virtually located in the Philippines and servers scattered around the world,” GdF said in a statement.

“This colossal site of 10 million active torrents receives over 3 million visits daily from all over the world and Italy was the third most popular country of origin for users behind only India and the USA.”

GdF adds that by their estimates, KickAssTorrents generates $8.5 million per year from advertising and other revenue.

“This international platform has long been targeted by U.S. authorities as one of the worst sites for the illegal distribution of music,” said Enzo Mazza, chief of FIMI, Italy’s answer to the RIAA.

“The intervention of the Italian authorities was very important, especially for the protection of legal music in Italy, which now represents 30% of the market. Platforms such as The Pirate Bay, BTjunkie and KickAssTorrents are run by criminal organizations that make millions from advertising.”

Responding to the news, Italian lawyer Giovanni Battista Gallus told TorrentFreak that unlike The Pirate Bay blockade, there is no “proper” court order for the current blockade. This also happened with the BTjunkie block earlier, which was handled by the same prosecutor.

“In this case the order has been issued only by the public prosecutor, without any judicial intervention,” he said. “I have serious doubts whether this is appropriate under Italian criminal procedure law, and I’m very curious to see the outcome of an appeal against this order.”

The extent of the forthcoming blockade isn’t clear from the information currently being released. However, the GdF statement specifically mentions kickasstorrents.com, a domain the site left behind when it switched to Kat.ph in April 2011.

Update: FIMI boss Enzo Mazza confirmed to TorrentFreak that both the old and new domains and IP-addresses will be blocked, and added the following message.

“The investigation into the criminal organization behind the site is still making progress and the public prosecutor is in touch with the authorities in the countries involved in the case. The case is followed by the Fiscal police who are usually investigating Italian mafia bosses. This means they are well equipped to take the members of the KAT gang to justice.”

Source: Italian Court Orders All ISPs To Block KickAssTorrents

On May 10th, the Court of The Hague ordered an additional five ISPs – UPC, KPN, Tele2, T-Mobile and Telfort – to block two TPB IP addresses and 20 domain names within 10 days or face fines of up to 250,000 euros.

These pair of court rulings, although similar, were not identical. In the first ruling permission was given for BREIN to add additional IP addresses should The Pirate Bay choose to switch or add IP addresses to their site.

Not surprisingly and as already reported, TPB did in fact add a new IP address plus a proxy-friendly version of their site in recent days. BREIN was quick to react and has now ordered Ziggo and XS4ALL to block the IP address 194.71.107.80 within 10 days or face fines of up to 250,000 euros.

However, in the second ruling against the five other ISPs, the Court felt that the XS4ALL/Ziggo ruling went too far. As a result the Court only allowed two TPB specific IPs to be censored and disallowed BREIN from simply adding more. This means that even when the ban kicks in during the days to come, users of UPC, KPN, Tele2, T-Mobile and Telfort will be able to access TPB by using the IP address listed above.

Although not required by law to block the recently-added IP address, Webwereld reports that two ISPs have confirmed they were approached by BREIN to do so.

“We will do not comply without a court order”, said Jan-Willem te Gussinklo Ohmann, spokesman for Tele2.

“We will not respond to [BREIN's] request,” said a spokesperson for KPN. “Our position is: we’re not going to make destinations on the Internet inaccessible to our subscribers without a judge determining that it is necessary.”

However, contesting the addition of new IP addresses isn’t the only way these ISPs are resisting web blockades. From the first ruling, Ziggo and XS4ALL already announced that they will appeal and now from the second ruling, Tele2 have just confirmed that they have done the same.

“At the moment BREIN wants a blockade of The Pirate Bay, but tomorrow there may be other interest groups preparing their wishlists,” Tele2 said. “The ruling is a threat to Internet freedom in our country.”

Source: ISPs Refuse to Block New Pirate Bay IP-Address

It’s an incredibly simple concept. The meme is based on a bait and switch, whereby someone posts a hyperlink which allegedly provides content relevant to the current discussion, but in fact leads to the 1987 Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up” instead.

People who follow these links and end up viewing the song/video are said to have been “Rickrolled” and over the years millions of people have been fooled into doing so. However, those falling into the trap today are being met with something not nearly as entertaining and, if it’s even possible, something that is even more annoying.

Due to a copyright complaint, the original Rickroll video has been removed from YouTube.

Taking down a five-year-old video with tens of millions of views is strange enough, but it is far from clear why AVG Technologies – the people behind AVG Anti-Virus (?) – would want to do so at all.

Hopefully there has been some terrible mistake and everything will be sorted out soon. If not, the consequences could be unpredictable. The Rickroll meme started life on the notorious 4chan message board in 2007 and developed into a worldwide sensation from there, and as we all know that particular community is not known for its patience, nor lack of creativity when it comes to revenge tactics.

This is not the first time that the Rickroll video has been removed though. It was removed by YouTube in 2010 but reinstated shortly afterwards.

TorrentFreak contacted both AVG and Google-owned YouTube for comment and we’ll post their statements here when they arrive.

Update: After being blocked for 24 hours, the video is now back. We’re still waiting for an official explanation on what happened.

Source: Rickroll Meme Destroyed By Copyright Takedown

This week Dotcom and his legal team were at Auckland’s High Court to request a judicial review of the legality of the search warrants that were used to raid his Coatesville mansion in January.

During the hearing Dotcom’s lawyer Paul Davison demanded access to the data stored on the 135 computers and hard drives that were taken into custody.

The lawyer argued that the data is needed to mount a proper defense. Not only to fight the extradition, but also to show that “excessive police action’ was used during the raid. The raid was captured by CCTV data which is stored on the computers in question.

The FBI, however, is objecting to the data handover because some of the files are encrypted. Megaupload’s founder is refusing to hand over the passwords to these files before he’s guaranteed access to the data himself, supervised by the court if needed.

During the hearing Dotcom and his legal team also learned that the data stored on the computers has already been sent to the U.S. authorities. Previously the court had offered assurances that this would not happen without prior warning.

Davison responded to these revelations by saying that the process was “off the rails” and that the rights of Megaupload’s founder have been “subverted”.

Talking to Radio New Zealand, Dotcom’s lawyer Ira Rothken suggests foul play, and alleges that the U.S. Government is trying to get valuable evidence out of New Zealand to obstruct a successful defense.

“Our concerns are that the United States will have New Zealand take all the data and all the hard drives that have been confiscated and remove them from the New Zealand jurisdiction, essentially making it so the New Zealand judiciary cannot exercise New Zealand’s views, New Zealand’s values in fairness and due process, and bring it all over to the United States so that it cannot be used in the extradition hearing.”

The hearings had an emotional affect on the Megaupload founder. When his lawyer recalled how Dotcom was “ripped from his family” in January in a raid which may not have been legitimate, he had to wipe tears from his eyes.

Outside the court Dotcom commented on his emotional reaction.

“It’s just remembering what happened to us which I think was unfair and over the top. It just got to me. I’m just a human being, you know?” he told reporters.

Now that the hearings are over it is up to Judge Winkelmann to decide whether Megaupload’s founder can have access to his personal data, and to decide on the possible judicial review into the legality of the search warrants.

Meanwhile, the U.S. criminal case has gone relatively silent.

Dotcom told TorrentFreak that his legal team is working hard on a reply to the indictment where the “Mega Conspiracy” is accused of engaging in a racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement.

Whether Megaupload will have to defend itself in the U.S. is still uncertain though. Last month Judge O’Grady informed the FBI that a trial in the United States may never happen because it is impossible to serve a foreign company with criminal charges.

Source: Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom Refuses to Give Up Passwords

The music companies who asked for the blockade hope it will decrease piracy significantly, but it is doubtful whether this wish will come true.

Already we’ve seen a massive increase in traffic to proxy-websites from the UK, and this is only expected to increase during the coming days. In addition, The Pirate Bay team isn’t sitting still either. They’ve now rolled out a new site which circumvents the UK measures before they’ve even started.

In most countries where The Pirate Bay is blocked it’s done by a domain and IP-address filter. But, since TPB added a new IP-address at 194.71.107.80, blocked subscribers can access the site again without problems. At least for now that is, since in some cases the copyright holders have the power to add new domains and addresses upon request.

The Pirate Bay team is no stranger to this. However, circumventing the blockades directly is not the main reason the IP-address was added. Regular users of TPB will notice that the site hosted on the new address is slightly different from the standard site.

The Pirate Bay team told TorrentFreak that the new site is setup to guarantee maximum compatibility with the many proxy sites that are out there.

“It is made so the people who setup proxies can use the new IP-address instead of coming up with complicated rewrites for static content and stuff. Instead of pointing their proxies to thepiratebay.se they should point it to that IP-address,” we were told.

Aside from making it easier to setup a proxy, the new page is also optimized for proxies in other ways. It will only show links to magnet files for example, and the login, register, comment and upload functions are disabled for security reasons.

So, even if the new IP-address is added to the various blocklists, the new site still functions as a basis for proxy sites.

The above once again shows that it’s virtually impossible to completely prevent people from accessing The Pirate Bay. There are simply too many options for people to route around the block. From visiting a proxy, to simply adding a few lines to their “hosts” file to access the site directly.

It appears that the only working option to stop people from accessing the site is to DDoS it into oblivion. But then again, that’s not really sustainable.

Source: Pirate Bay Simplifies Circumvention of ISP Blockades

Determined to break the plundering habits of these misguided souls, the US movie and recording industries have continuously meddled in the country, lobbying for tougher responses to file-sharing.

The results have been notable, not least the implementation of IPRED and the Data Retention Directive plus numerous prosecutions of file-sharing site operators and their users. But do tougher laws actually encourage people “to do the right thing” or even change their perception of what that thing is?

According to new findings from the Cybernorms research project at Lund University, the introduction of aggressive legislation has done little to reduce levels of file-sharing carried out by young people.

“In Sweden we saw a moderate drop in file sharing in 2009 when IPRED was implemented. Since then it has remained at approximately 60 percent among 15-25 year old people,” researcher Marcin de Kaminski told TorrentFreak.

“Our conclusion is that repressive actions that lack societal support may still have effects, but that the effects are limited.”

The problem for the copyright industries is that while they’ve been very effective in lobbying for more legal restrictions, they have failed to make ground in matching those frameworks with what people consider to be acceptable behavior.

“As a part of our research regarding cybernorms we try to understand and
describe informal social control,” says Kaminski.

“Our results show that young people feel no pressure from neighbors, friends, relatives, teachers etc. to refrain from file sharing. A higher degree of pressure or social control would most possibly have a clear impact on habits and practices regarding file sharing.”

Essentially, file-sharers do not believe they are doing anything wrong and while this remains the case the ‘problem’ is unlikely to go away. Kaminski told us that the research shows a slight increase in young people who file share on a daily basis, from 18% in September 2009 to 20% in January 2012. Additionally, more file-sharers are turning to anonymity services to hide their activities.

“File sharing is an interesting case illustrating the fact that repressive sanctions alone might have some effects on illegal practices, but that the effects first and foremost seem to be limited and secondly might be for the wrong reasons.

“Without support for repressive efforts in social norms the effects tend to result in a feeling of increased risk or danger – rather than [the activity being repressed] actually being considered wrong,” Kaminski concludes.

That said, tougher laws don’t leave file-sharers entirely untouched. But instead of stopping their behavior, they take measures to hide it. Previously, researchers from the Cyber Norms found that when compared to figures from late 2009, 40% more 15 to 25-year-olds are now hiding their activities online through VPN services.

Source: File-Sharing Prospers Despite Tougher Laws

After a chain of events that reads like a Hollywood blockbuster script, the case is now on trial with husband and wife team Anton and Kelly Vickerman as the defendants.

As is often the case, the investigation into the alleged pirate site was not started by the police, but by Hollywood. In 2008 and working closely with the MPAA, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) hired former Dutch policeman Pascal Hetzschold to try and make contact with SurfTheChannel’s owner.

Using the cover “Roger Van Veen,” Hetzschold pretended to represent a venture capitalist who was interested in the site. After a few emails back forth, SurfTheChannel operator “Anton” agreed to meet with him in London.

During that meeting Anton opened up about the site according to Hetzschold. He allegedly explained that the site made $50,000 in revenue each month from an average of 400,000 visitors per day. Anton also admitted that he founded the site which he ran in collaboration with two other people.

After the meeting was over the two parted company. Or at least, that’s what Anton was led to believe. In reality, Hetzschold tailed the SurfTheChannel owner a distance of nearly 250 miles back to his home in Gateshead where he lived with his wife Kelly.

Now that the MPAA and FACT knew where the couple lived, they were ready to carry out the second part of their plan. In preparation for a possible police raid on the premises, they sent over private investigator Paul Varley as a prospective house buyer. Once he had gained access to the family home Varley took a series of pictures, with a special interest in computer equipment.

The MPAA/FACT undercover operation eventually resulted in a raid on the Vickerman’s home. During the raid it became apparent how closely the Hollywood group had been working together with the authorities. Not only were Hollywood representatives taking part in the questioning, they also brought along investigators who were allowed to examine the equipment.

After looking into the case for a few months, UK authorities decided not to start a criminal prosecution. However, that wasn’t the end of the SurfTheChannel case.

Determined to hold the site’s operators responsible for linking to third party streaming sites, the MPAA focused on a programmer from the United States. After teaming up with the US authorities, a criminal investigation was started against Boston resident Brendan DeBeasi in 2011.

DeBeasi had been hired to maintain and code for SurfTheChannel, for which he was paid the sum of $9,850. For his collaboration with the streaming links site he was charged with conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, facing up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

However, DeBeasi wasn’t convicted in the United States. Instead, he worked out a deal with the authorities who agreed to dismiss the copyright infringement charge in exchange for a testimony in the UK Vickerman trial. In addition, the programmer agreed to pay the MPAA the $9,850 he made from his work at SurfTheChannel.

In other words, the US authorities agreed to drop copyright charges in the US in exchange for a testimony in a UK fraud case, which to our knowledge is unprecedented.

Possibly because of this fresh witness, the criminal prosecution against the Vickerman couple was started after all. In what Hollywood describes as the largest copyright related fraud case in UK history, their trial started last week at Newcastle Crown Court.

During the court hearings some of the above details were brought up, as the Sunday Times reports.

Prosecutor David Groome argued that SurfTheChannel facilitated mass copyright infringement resulting in massive losses for the movie industry. Defense lawyer David Walbank on the other hand noted that the site’s servers were located in Sweden, which means that the site might have not operated illegally under UK law.

The case is expected to last a month but which way it will go is hard to predict. Both are charged with two counts of conspiracy to defraud and pleaded not guilty.

In 2010, linking website TV-Links was deemed to be a ‘mere conduit’ of information and its admins were acquitted. From a functional viewpoint this site was similar to SurfTheChannel.

However, the TV-Links case was conducted on a question of copyright and the charges against the SurfTheChannel operators are for fraud. Nevertheless, a similar approach failed when tested against the former operator of OiNK, Alan Ellis.

Another interesting angle comes from the case against the operators of BitTorrent tracker FileSoup. They had their case dismissed last year after the court concluded that the criminal investigation was built on evidence solely provided by industry groups. As the cloak-and-dagger behavior detailed above illustrates, there can be little doubt that Hollywood was deeply involved in the criminal investigation against SurfTheChannel.

Update: We deleted the reference to a “lifetime” imprisonment which appeared in the Sunday Times. The maximum term in fraud cases is 10 years.

Source: Undercover MPAA Agents Expose Alleged Movie Pirates

Today we can report that Greece is the latest country to walk down the controversial path of web censorship for the protection of intellectual property. The Athens First Instance Court has just handed down a ruling which orders the country’s ISPs to begin censoring a pair of sites the music industry says are infringing their copyrights on a grand scale.

The ruling is based on Article 64A of law 2121/1993 which states that “Rightsholders may apply for an injunction against intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to infringe copyright or related rights.”

A similar provision in Section 97A of the UK’s Copyright, Designs and Patents Act led to The Pirate Bay being blocked there earlier this month.

Interestingly, neither of the sites to be blocked in Greece is The Pirate Bay, and the unusual features don’t stop there. The first site to be censored is Ellinadiko.com, a music sharing forum that was once very popular with locals. We’re referring to the site in the past tense since it appears to have shut down.

The second site to be blocked is Music-Bazaar.com, a Russian operated and hosted ‘AllofMP3′-style webstore selling MP3s at bargain basement prices. These sites are a thorn in the side of the recording industry but operate with both impunity and arguable legality in Russia.

The blocks will be initiated in two ways. ISPs will have to tamper with their DNS records so that subscribers trying to access the sites will be redirected elsewhere, probably to an ISP holding page.

Second, and to thwart people trying to visit the sites without the use of a domain name at all, the IP addresses for the sites will be filtered out. However, according to discussion on Greek file-sharing forums, the IP addresses listed in the court order are no longer in use by either site having been changed a while ago.

Following similar actions taken by the Dutch and UK Pirate parties, the Greek Pirate Party are indicating that they are “ready to implement any lawful technological measure to ensure freedom of communication, speech and exchange ideas online and in society.”

Source: Greek Court Orders ISP Blockades of ‘Pirate’ Music Sites

John Carter is the most downloaded movie this week.

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

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent

Statistics gathered by TorrentFreak reveal that more people are downloading the show compared to last year, when it came in as the second most downloaded TV-show of 2011. The number of weekly downloads worldwide is about equal to the estimated viewers on HBO in the U.S., but why?

One of the prime reasons for the popularity among pirates is the international delay in airing. In Australia, for example, fans of the show have to wait a week before they can see the latest episode. So it’s hardly a surprise that some people are turning to BitTorrent instead.

And indeed, if we look at the top countries where Game of Thrones is downloaded, Australia comes out on top with 10.1% of all downloads (based on one episode).

But delays are just part of the problem. The fact that the show is only available to those who pay for an HBO subscription doesn’t help either. This explains why hundreds of thousands of people from the U.S. prefer to use BitTorrent.

The same is true for Canada and the United Kingdom, placed third and fourth in the list of pirate kings. If we look at the ranking of cities, London takes the lead followed by Sydney, Melbourne and Amsterdam.

To a certain degree one could claim that HBO is to blame for Game of Throne’s success on BitTorrent. They want to keep access to the show “exclusive” and even Netflix wasn’t able to buy the rights no matter what they offered.

Whether this is the best decision in terms of revenue is hard to tell, but it’s clear that HBO prefers more exclusiveness over less piracy. And who knows, maybe they even sell HBO subscriptions to BitTorrent downloaders in the long run.

The reasons above are not exhaustive of course, there are many more reasons why people turn to BitTorrent. For some it’s become a matter of habit that will be hard to break, no matter where they live and how good the legal alternative is.

If there are any Game of Thrones pirates reading this, let us know what drives you in the comments.

Source: Who’s Pirating Game of Thrones, And Why?

Two issues made this case stand out. One, this is the first time sharers of music have been sued since the RIAA ended its infamous campaign. Two, the suing of All Shall Perish’s fans is being done without the band’s permission. Indeed, the band’s label, Nuclear Blast, didn’t even tell ASP that they’d signed over the band’s copyrights to Panama-based World Digital Rights so that they could sue.

TorrentFreak has kept in touch with ASP manager Ryan Downey who has been hoping that the lawsuit would be withdrawn. However, we discovered that World Digital Rights have persisted with their lawsuit and earlier this month were granted permission from Judge Sheri Polster Chappell to obtain the identities of 80 alleged file-sharers from US ISPs.

We informed Downey of the development and he and the band’s lawyer went away to see what could be done.

“The band’s attorney made it clear to the licensing people [at Nuclear Blast Records] that the band wanted no part in lawsuits against fans. The industry is changing, illegal downloading is troublesome for bands and of course, for record labels, but whatever the solution will be – streaming, subscription, Kickstarter, new ways of looking at it entirely, whatever comes about – the band and I are in agreement (as is their lawyer) that SUING MUSIC FANS SURE ISN’T IT,” Downey told TorrentFreak.

But of course, when this story broke last month Nuclear Blast were already aware that the band didn’t support suing fans yet either couldn’t or wouldn’t stop World Digital Rights persisting with the lawsuit. Clearly the band’s protests needed underlining.

“The licensing folks at Nuclear Blast in Germany took all of this to mean we wanted them to prevent World Digital Rights from pursuing any new actions / claims. I don’t know how we could have been more clear, but, we emphasized again, after receiving your email and being made aware of these new developments, that what we were saying all along was DISMISS ANY AND ALL LAWSUITS AGAINST ALL SHALL PERISH FANS,” Downey told us.

Then this week there appeared to be a breakthrough.

“We were informed [Wednesday] by Nuclear Blast that they would tell World Digital to dismiss all of this. Furthermore, we have pressed (yet again) to ensure the copyright registration returns to the band as owners of all recordings, as nobody else had the right to register the band’s copyrights as World Digital seems to have either done or attempted at some point.”

But while Downey has answered questions and been very responsive, the same cannot be said about Nuclear Blast. Request for comment sent to several members of staff, from those in the licensing department to the label owner, were not responded to.

That said, the silence is not unexpected. While Downey has gone out of his way to be unfailingly polite when speaking to us about Nuclear Blast, using terms such as “hard working”, “passionate”, “communicative” and “supportive”, it’s impossible to overlook the fact that someone there transferred the band’s copyrights to a troll without even having the courtesy to mention it. And that troll continued with the lawsuit despite knowing the band were against it.

The best outcome now is that the whole thing goes away, but it’s still possible that World Digital Rights will persist and people will get settlement demands through the mail. If that happens, recipients will have someone to turn to.

“The band, their attorney and myself have and will continue to take any steps to protect their fans, yes, even those who file trade,” Downey told us. “The band would prefer that their fans legally purchase, stream or otherwise enjoy their music. But they definitely have not, will not and do not wish to sue their fans.”

If any reader receives a letter from World Digital Rights, write to us at the usual address.

Source: Music Pirates Will Be Unmasked, Despite Band’s Protests

The security experts have observed a massive spike in activity compared to 2011, mostly originating from locations in Russia, Canada, China, Australia and the USA.

The CERT group operates a system that scans for online threats and the attack on BitTorrent triggered several of their honeypot sensors. These attack sources send data packages that appear to be legitimate, but the IP-addresses they send are forged.

The security researchers, who say these poisoning attacks are happening on a massive scale, observe that they are targeted at specific BitTorrent swarms sharing Russian movie releases.

One of the likely explanations for these poisoning attacks is that anti-piracy outfits are utilizing them to “protect” their clients’ movies. For example, these outfits could overload BitTorrent swarms with corrupt data or “disconnect” messages while masquerading as legitimate downloaders.

This is exactly what the Microsoft funded startup Pirate Pay appears to be doing although other companies may also use similar methods. A company called ICM is currently listed as “protecting” the Russian film that was the subject of the attacks identified by CERT.

The security researchers don’t make any conclusive claims about the origins of the attacks, but they do note that anti-piracy groups are a possible source.

“At least one interest group that would benefit from uTP poisoning is easy to point at: multimedia companies and their subcontractors. Conduction of this kind of campaign by these institutions wouldn’t be precedent. It’s also possible that generated traffic is used for BitTorrent network mapping and data gathering for later use in other projects,” CERT comments.

Perhaps of even more interest, CERT also notes that the poisoning attack, or anomaly as they call it, may very well breach cybersecurity law.

“[The attacks] produce visible disruption in IT systems and large amounts of our false-positive high-level alerts is a good proof. In terms of Polish law, European Convention on Cybercrime and U.S. Codes (and probably many other sources of domestic law) legality of process producing the anomaly is questionable,” the security experts note.

In other words, the techniques these anti-piracy outfits appear to be using to prevent people from sharing copyrighted movies could be illegal. If that is the case then the movie companies who hire these anti-piracy outfits may be complicit in cybersecurity crimes.

That would be a problem.

TorrentFreak contacted the CEO of the Microsoft-funded Pirate Pay for a comment on the legality of his service, but we are yet to receive a reply. More details about the specifics of the attacks are available on the CERT website.

Source: Anti-Piracy Outfits Launch Attack on BitTorrent Protocol

For more than a decade the mode of operation employed by these companies has followed a similar pattern. Pick the most famous or popular file-sharing client of the day, use flashy websites and confusing domain names to attract users who can’t tell an imposter from the real thing, lull them in with the suggestion of free downloads, and then extract money from them.

These outfits have picked on just about every file-sharing brand out there with impunity, but now one of them is being held to account.

In a lawsuit filed this week, BitTorrent Inc. is claiming damages from a German-based company for trademark infringement, unfair competition and cybersquatting.

According to the San-Francisco based owner of uTorrent, BitTorrent Marketing GMBH is
making money from users who start out looking for BitTorrent Inc.’s products but then get “misdirected” to dozens of domains bearing similar names, all operated by BitTorrent Marketing.

Listed in the lawsuit are a sample 54 domains such as Bit-Torent.com, Bit-Torrent.com and Bitorrent.net, plus many other misspellings of the official BitTorrent brand.

Once users have visited one of these domains they wrongly presume to be operated by BitTorrent Inc., they are led down a misleading path promising media downloads.

“U.S. users who select the links on Defendant’s BitTorrent website are redirected to websites enabling them to sign up for a variety of services associated with accessing and viewing media and online content, including, among others, ultimate-downloadcenter.com and itv-dish-pro.com,” the lawsuit reads.

However, those who are eventually convinced to part with their money end up disappointed.

“Users who sign up and pay to obtain the services offered through Defendant’s BitTorrent website do not in fact receive those services. For example, after paying over $50 to sign up for ultimate-downloadcenter.com, U.S. users are redirected to third-party websites of other digital media providers, like Netflix.com and Hulu.com, and invited to sign up for membership with those services as well,” the lawsuit continues.

“Accordingly, Plaintiff is informed and believes, and based thereon alleges, that Defendant is intentionally using Plaintiff’s BitTorrent trademark to deceive U.S consumers into signing up for memberships and other ‘services’ that do not afford those users any tangible benefit, with knowledge that such conduct is a result of confusion as to whether those websites are associated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Plaintiff.”

It appears that Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent, became aware of the people behind BitTorrent Marketing around 9 years ago. In 2003 Cohen was contacted by an individual requesting permission to register the BitTorrent.de domain name. He refused, but the company (at the time known by a different name) went ahead and started registering BitTorrent-like domains anyway, as well as the German and European trademarks for BitTorrent.

After targeting other world-famous file-sharing brands such as Azureus, Vuze, Kazaa and Morpheus, in early 2012 BitTorrent Marketing started using the BitTorrent trademark in the US through the website BitTorrent.net.

“This filing is part of a series of actions that we’ve taken since 2010 to prevent this company from using the BitTorrent brand to trick users into using a service that is not the genuine article our company provides,” a BitTorrent Inc. spokesperson told TorrentFreak.

In conclusion, BitTorrent Inc. is asking for BitTorrent Marketing to be barred from using the BitTorrent mark “or any mark confusingly similar.” They also request damages for trademark related offenses committed by their German namesake including $100,000 for each infringing domain name.

Source: BitTorrent Inc Takes Legal Action Against Download Scammers

The parties agreed on a system through which copyright infringers are warned that their behavior is unacceptable. After six warnings ISPs may then take a variety of repressive measures, which include slowing down offenders’ connections and temporary disconnections.

The plan was announced under the name ‘Copyright Alerts‘ in July last year and the first ISPs were expected to send out the first warnings before the end of 2011. But this deadline passed silently and as things stand now it looks like the July 1, 2012 deadline is not going to be met by all ISPs either.

TorrentFreak asked the CCI about the upcoming target date, and their response suggests that things may take longer than expected.

“The dates mentioned in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) are not hard deadlines but were intended to keep us on track to have the Copyright Alert System up and running as quickly as possible and in the most consumer friendly manner possible,” a spokesperson told us.

“We do not intend to launch until we are confident that the program is consumer friendly and able to be implemented in a manner consistent with all of the goals of the MOU. We expect our implementation to begin later this year.”

In other words, it’s taking more time than expected. That said, the CCI did inform us that they have finally selected a third-party company that will be responsible for monitoring BitTorrent swarms. However, the name of the firm remains a secret for now.

“The technology partner we have identified and begun working with is an independent and impartial expert and we expect to have an announcement about the independent expert shortly,” TorrentFreak was told.

As described in the agreement, this independent “technology partner” will first be tested by yet another independent expert to see if their data collection methods stand up to scrutiny. This is a possible reason for the “delay” but there are many more.

At their end the internet providers all have to create a system that allows them to keep track of the warnings. To ensure the privacy of subscribers, this database of alleged pirates is not stored centrally.

Hoping to find out more about what type of punishments ISPs have planned and their views on the agreement, we contacted several of them.

Verizon was quick to respond but didn’t want to provide any details on the planned punishments. The ISP did say that they believe the voluntary agreement is the right solution for the piracy problem.

“Verizon has always said that copyright infringement is wrong and through this voluntary consumer friendly system, we believe we can educate our consumers and offer them access to legal alternatives,” the company told TorrentFreak.

“We believe this program offers the best approach to the problem of illegal file sharing and, importantly, is one that respects the privacy and rights of our subscribers. It also provides a mechanism for helping people to find many great sources of legal content.”

Other Internet providers contacted by TorrentFreak, including Comcast and AT&T, did not respond to repeated inquiries about the BitTorrent crackdown.

The CCI, however, ensured TorrentFreak that none of the ISPs has plans to terminate the accounts of subscribers. Temporary disconnections remain as one of the possible punishments. Which measures the various ISPs will choose remains a mystery for now. We’ll publish more on this and other details of the scheme in the near future.

Source: US “Six Strikes” Anti-Piracy Scheme Delayed

It’s not absolutely clear why this is the case but it’s certainly possible that the cross-continent shared understanding of the English language has brought the fear of censorship closer to home for all Internet users. Whatever the reason, the kick-back has been immense.

Rather than sitting idly by, net activists all around the world have been doing their part to re-connect millions of Britains to The Pirate Bay, many by running their own proxy services. At the forefront of this effort are the UK Pirate Party.

Inspired by their Dutch counterparts who recently set up a proxy to bypass a blockade in the Netherlands, Pirate Party UK reacted similarly to the High Court-ordered ISP blockade in the UK. In parallel with the first ISP block from Virgin Media, PPUK responded by firing up their very own anti-censorship proxy.

After being mentioned dozens of times in the media and featuring in the #1 position on the PirateReverse information site, PPUK’s proxy service quickly became the weapon of choice for UK Internet users wanting to unblock the galaxy’s most-resilient torrent site.

The effect on their web presence has been nothing short of dramatic.

Although impressive, it’s worth pointing out that the graph above doesn’t tell the whole story.

Just over 3 weeks ago the Pirate Party UK website was listed way outside the top 100,000 most-visted websites in the UK. Today, as a direct result of their response to Pirate Bay censorship, the site is listed by Alexa as the UK’s 1,550th most popular website.

According to PPUK’s Harry Percival, during a single 24 hour period last week the site received more than 1.8m hits. Given the unavailability of the Pirate Bay website over the past 48 hours, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the PPUK site’s ranking has increased again.

“Whenever the government tries to break the Internet we get a massive boost,” PPUK Culture & Media spokesperson Andrew Robinson told TorrentFreak.

“Whether it’s the PirateBay blocking, the CCDP snooper’s charter, or the latest idea for a porn morality filter, it seems like traditional parties just don’t get it – and people are starting to realize that you can’t just ignore this stuff, it really does have an impact on freedoms, civil liberties and innovation. That’s why the Pirates, both here in the UK and worldwide, are attracting more and more support.

“Another way of looking at it is: the BPI’s high court action has sent a very clear message to politicians of all parties: Voters love file sharing. If you want to be massively popular, you should support file sharing too,” Robinson concludes.

The big question is what happens next. Just over the North Sea in the Netherlands Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN obtained a far-reaching court ruling which banned the Dutch Pirate Party from not only running a proxy, but also telling people where to go to unblock Pirate Bay.

Will the members of the BPI, the companies behind the UK block, go back to court in an effort to silence the Pirates? That’s certainly a possibility but even if they were successful, given the response to censorship thus far there are plenty of people prepared to take up the slack.

Source: Pirate Bay Ban Rockets Pirate Party Website Into The Big Time

The paper carries the self-explanatory title “Associating Depressive Symptoms in College Students with Internet Usage Using Real Internet Data” and will be published in an upcoming issue of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine.

In brief, the researchers monitored how 216 undergraduates at Missouri S&T used the campus network. They then linked these findings to the results of a self-rated depression scale (CES-D survey).

What they found was that the use of peer-to-peer octets, packets and duration is positively correlated with depressive symptoms. In other words, people who are “depressed” are more avid file-sharers than those who don’t show depressive symptoms.

According to lead researcher Dr. Sriram Chellappan, the findings are unique among their kind.

“The study is believed to be the first that uses actual Internet data, collected unobtrusively and anonymously, to associate Internet usage with signs of depression,” he told Psys. “Previous research on Internet usage has relied on surveys, which are ‘a far less accurate way’ of assessing how people use the Internet.”

It is unclear what the direction of the relation between depressive symptoms and file-sharing is. The MPAA and RIAA may use the results to claim that file-sharing is bad for your mental health, but this can’t be concluded from the current findings.

Aside from heavy P2P use, people with depressive symptoms also use online chat more, and spend more time sending email. HTTP traffic and streaming were not correlated to depressive symptoms.

As a category file-sharers are in good company as previous studies have linked depressive symptoms to online shopping, excessive online video viewing, social networking, online gambling, and excessive late-night Internet use.

Where things do get scary is when Dr. Sriram Chellappan suggests that it might be a good idea to develop applications that scan people’s Internet use for these risky behaviors.

“The software would be a cost-effective and an in-home tool that could proactively prompt users to seek medical help if their Internet usage patterns indicate possible depression. The software could also be installed on campus networks to notify counselors of students whose Internet usage patterns are indicative of depressive behavior,” he explains.

This goes a bit too far, and is also uncalled for as there is absolutely no evidence that even a decent percentage of all avid P2P users show depressive symptoms.

That a researcher even suggests this is baffling. Not everything has to be monitored and checked. Most people just want their monthly invoice from their ISP, not a complete mental health report. Or perhaps i’m just being far too negative…

Source: File-Sharing Is Linked to Depression, Researchers Find

None of these researchers, however, used a large sample of accurate download statistics from a BitTorrent tracker to examine this topic. This missing element motivated economist Robert Hammond, Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University, to conduct his own research.

In a paper titled “Profit Leak? Pre-Release File Sharing and the Music Industry” Hammond published his findings.

Between May 2010 and January 2011 the professor collected a variety of download statistics of new albums that were released on the largest private BitTorrent tracker dedicated to music. He then used this data in combination with sales numbers to construct a model that predicts what the causal effect of piracy on music sales is.

The results are unique in its kind and reveal that BitTorrent piracy causes an increase in album sales.

“I isolate the causal effect of file sharing of an album on its sales by exploiting exogenous variation in how widely available the album was prior to its official release date. The findings suggest that file sharing of an album benefits its sales. I don’t find any evidence of a negative effect in any specification, using any instrument,” Hammond concludes in his paper.

In total the sample includes 1,095 albums from 1,075 artists. The research focuses on albums that leaked before their official release. The music industry often states that “curbing pre-release piracy is a particular priority for the recording industry.” These releases are also the focus of criminal proceedings against pirate sites both in the US and the UK.

However, according to the research, sales may actually be hurt by going after these sites. Hammond’s findings suggest that piracy itself acts as a form of advertising similar to radio play and media campaigns, where more downloads result in a moderate increase in sales.

That said, the effect described in the paper is a moderate one. Taking all factors into account Hammond finds that an album that leaks a month in advance results in 59.6 additional sales.

To some degree the results are surprising, as other studies have found a negative relation between music piracy and sales. However, Hammond notes that none of these studies had access to such detailed and precise download statistics which make it possible to go beyond the usual correlation.

Also, unlike several other studies, Hammond’s focuses on album releases instead of single songs.

“I focus on how file sharing of an individual album helps or hurts that album’s sales. The question of interest here is whether an individual artist should expect her sales to decline given wider pre-release availability of the album in file-sharing networks. I find that the answer is no.”

Another unique finding reported in the paper is that popular artists profit more from piracy than less established acts. For smaller artists there is no effect of pre-release piracy on sales. This contradicts older research. Hammond, however, notes that his data is richer than in the other studies, and therefore more accurate.

In addition, we’d argue that the focus on pre-releases may also account for the missing effect on new artists.

While the reported data appears to be solid, the question has to be asked how representative the data set is for all music piracy on BitTorrent. The private tracker in question has more than 150,000 users, who are almost exclusively more than average music fans.

Overall, the paper offers a unique and unprecedented analysis of BitTorrent piracy on music sales. It clearly disputes the music industry argument that pre-release piracy hurts album sales, and suggests that BitTorrent piracy can act as promotion.

Source: BitTorrent Piracy Boosts Music Sales, Study Finds

Three weeks ago four members of the group were arrested and charged with several counts of criminal copyright infringement. Aside from reproducing and releasing copyrighted films on their private tracker UnleashTheNet, they also “capped” films at local movie theaters.

With his guilty plea Lovelady faces a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison, a $250,000 fine, plus damages that might be claimed by copyright holders.

In the plea agreement Lovelady further agrees to “cooperate fully and truthfully with the United States, and provide all information known to the defendant regarding any criminal activity as requested by the government.” This might affect the cases against the other IMAGiNE members who have not pleaded guilty according to the arraignment sheets.

In addition to the guilty plea, an overview of “facts” which Lovelady signed as true and accurate gives an overview of some of the copyright infringements that took place, that UnleashTheNet was operated by IMAGiNE, and that the group also sold releases.

In furtherance of the conspiracy and to provide a platform for IMAGiNE Group members to share and to ready copies of motion pictures and other copyrighted works for dissemination over the Internet, in July and August 2010 a conspirator in the Eastern District of Virginia took a series of steps to facilitate the use of a new website for the IMAGiNE Group, titled “unleashthe.net.” In the Eastern District of Virginia and elsewhere, this conspirator: (a) rented computer servers in France and elsewhere for use by the IMAGiNE Group and to host its website; (b) registered domain names for use b the IMAGiNE Group; and (c) opened email and PayPal accounts to receive donations and payments from persons downloading or buying IMAGiNE Group releases of infringing or “pirated” copies of motion pictures and other copyrighted works and to fund payments for computer servers.

The same document also reveals that the MPAA was the main motivator behind the investigation.

“Following contact from a representative of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) in March 2010, investigators with the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement(Homeland Security Investigations or HSI Norfolk) began investigating an Internet release group, identified as the IMAGiNE Group,” the document reads.

This is identical to the case against Megaupload, where the MPAA was also the driving force. And there are more similarities. Both cases are being handled by US Attorney Neil MacBride, who was also on the NinjaVideo case. Considering MacBride’s past work as Vice President of Anti-Piracy for the lobby group BSA, he is probably well-connected with the MPAA.

Thus far MacBride and his team have booked some successes in the NinjaVideo case. Five people connected to the site were arrested last year and four received jail sentences.

Lovelady and the others have been released from custody and await their sentencing, which is scheduled for this fall.

Source: IMAGiNE Member Pleads Guilty to Criminal Copyright Infringement

At the time of writing The Pirate Bay has been inaccessible to most of the world for nearly 24 hours and our ‘inbox’ is suffering. But it appears to be the timing of the downtime that has caused more people than usual to panic.

The root lies in the recent court-ordered censorship of The Pirate Bay in the UK. The country’s leading ISPs are required to block the site so millions of people were already expecting to have trouble accessing the domain. What they didn’t anticipate was the failure of the many published workarounds to resupply access to the site.

For those to work the site itself has to be working properly and currently it is not. While TPB is used to being censored by courts and ISPs, it is a little less used to being blacked-out by other means. TorrentFreak is informed by a Pirate Bay insider that the site is currently being subjected to a DDoS attack rendering it unavailable in many parts of the world.

Now, while we’re informed that the problem might be mitigated during the next few hours, the timing of this attack against the site is either ironic, ‘interesting’ or at the very least coincidental, depending on your viewpoint.

Just last week, The Pirate Bay openly criticized elements of the ‘Anonymous’ collective for carrying out a DDoS attack on Virgin Media, the first UK ISP to block access to The Pirate Bay.

“We do NOT encourage these actions. We believe in the open and free internets, where anyone can express their views. Even if we strongly disagree with them and even if they hate us,” said TPB in response to the DDoS attack against Virgin.

“So don’t fight them using their ugly methods. DDOS and blocks are both forms of censorship.”

Right now, whoever is attacking The Pirate Bay has achieved what no copyright or governmental authority anywhere in the world has – an almost complete disruption of the site’s operations on a global basis with no court order required.

But despite the DDoS there are still ways for people to access the site. A handful of the proxies set up to circumvent the ISP blockades still appear to work and, when all else fails, the crazy methods still work too.

Source: Pirate Bay Under DDoS Attack From Unknown Enemy

Copyright holders generally sue dozens, hundreds or sometimes even thousands of people at once, hoping to extract cash settlements from the alleged downloaders. The evidence they present to the court is usually an IP-address and a timestamp marking when the alleged infringement took place.

Early 2010, when these mass-lawsuits began, copyright holders targeted IP-addresses from all across the US in single lawsuits. This led some judges to dismiss cases because their courts have no jurisdiction over people who live elsewhere.

As a result, copyright holders switched to a new tactic. Before filing a suit they ran their database of infringing IP-addresses through so-called “geolocation” services so they could argue that the defendants most likely reside in the district where they were being sued.

This worked well for a while, but a new ruling by California District Court Judge Dean Pregerson puts an end to this new approach, killing 15 lawsuits in the process.

According to Pregerson, alleged BitTorrent pirates are protected by the First Amendment as they are “engaging in the exercise of speech, albeit to a limited extent.” Therefore, the copyright holder’s request to identify anonymous internet users has to meet certain criteria.

One of the requirements is that it’s absolutely clear that the accused are residents of the region where the court has jurisdiction, but according to Judge Pregerson it is not sufficient to use the results from a “geolocation” tool to prove it.

In a previous order the copyright holder – movie company Celestial Inc. – was asked to convince the court of the accuracy of these tools. In a reply Celestial referred to a website which contained some general claims as well as a quote from the company that collected the evidence, but it wasn’t enough.

“Based on Plaintiff’s own reliability claims, there may still be a 20 to 50 percent chance that this court lacks jurisdiction,” Judge Pregerson writes in his order.

The Judge adds that even if there is a slight chance that these tools are wrong, he simply can’t sign off on the subpoena request.

“Even if the most advanced geolocation tools were simply too unreliable to adequately establish jurisdiction, the court could not set aside constitutional concerns in favor of Plaintiff’s desire to subpoena the Doe Defendants’ identifying information.”

“Again, it is the First Amendment that requires courts to ensure complaints like this one would at least survive a motion to dismiss, before the court authorizes early discovery to identify anonymous internet users.”

The IP-address lookups and additional information provided by Celestial Inc. can’t guarantee that the defendants do indeed reside in California, and Judge Pregerson therefore dismissed the 15 mass-BitTorrent lawsuits the company filed at his court.

It also means the end of mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the Californian court, as no geolocation tool is 100% accurate.

While the ruling doesn’t mean the end of all mass-BitTorrent lawsuits in the US just yet, it appears that there’s a growing opposition from judges against these practices.

For example, two weeks ago we reported on a related ruling in which a Florida judge dismissed several cases because an IP-address doesn’t identify a person. In other words, even when a court has jurisdiction, the copyright holder can not prove that the account holder connected to the IP-address is the person who shared the copyrighted file.

If other judges adopt either of the rulings above, it means the end of mass-BitTorrent lawsuits as we know them.

Source: IP-Address Can’t Even Identify a State, BitTorrent Judge Rules

Throw a roadblock out and a new route is recalculated. So it is with DNS. Add blocks in the ICANN systems, and people work their way around them.

The most common way until now has been a browser plugin, like MAFIAAFire, but alternate DNS systems are starting to become more popular. One of those, OpenNIC, is looking to capitalise on that with its new .pirate TLD (top level domain).

Registration takes just minutes, and then your new .pirate domain will be accessible by anyone using one of OpenNIC’s many DNS servers. That’s the big drawback at present.

However, the OpenNIC project is not just limited to .pirate (or dotPirate, as they’ve called it). They also have .geek, .oss (as in open source software) and .parody, among others.

The man behind the dotPirate project is Travis McCrea, Deputy Leader of the Canadian Pirate Party.

“While the world gets smaller and more connected through advancements of the Internet and web technology, every day our ability to have a free flow of information becomes more and more threatened by countries who wish to censor and control the communication platform which brings us all together,” McCrea told TorrentFreak.

“This is something that we cannot let happen, and why the dotPirate Foundation, … is proud to announce the launch of the new Top Level Domain (TLD) .pirate on the OpenNIC root system.”

To prevent abuse, some of the more popular domains have already been reserved (including torrentfreak.pirate and thepiratebay.pirate). As an extra bonus, people using blockaid.me for their DNS will already be able to access .pirate domains – they added support for OpenNIC over the weekend.

For those using OpenDNS, the provider announced a new service for Windows users last week. DNSCrypt, previously only available for Mac OSX and Linux, is a technology that encrypts all DNS traffic between an Internet user and the OpenDNS service. It can be downloaded here.

.Pirate domains can be registered for free at dotpirate.me.

Source: .Pirate Domains Now Available Through OpenNic

From simple multiple PC locations to network-enabled storage devices and games consoles, effective home networking – wireless in particular – has gradually become a basic requirement.

In recent years, wireless routers – the now-commonplace devices enabling these networks – have become a conflict ground for lawyers working in file-sharing cases. When unauthorized (or at the least unidentified) people access them in order to engage in copyright infringement online, should their owners be held responsible?

In a landmark ruling yesterday which examined existing EU law, a District Court clarified the position in Finland following a near two-year long file-sharing case.

In 2010, anti-piracy group CIAPC obtained the identity of a local woman and sued her for copyright infringement. They claimed that she had used Direct Connect to infringe the rights of their entertainment industry members. Pay us 6,000 euros to make the case go away, they told her, or things will get much worse.

But instead of caving in the woman kicked back. The offense, which allegedly took place in a 12 minute time period on July 14th 2010, coincided with an event at the woman’s home attended by 100 people. Any one of them could have fired up a laptop, accessed the open WiFi, and been tracked by CIAPC.

“The applicants were unable to provide any evidence that the connection-owner herself had been involved in the file-sharing,” explains Ville Oksanen from Turre Legal, the law firm defending the woman.

“The court thus examined whether the mere act of providing a WiFi connection not
protected with a password can be deemed to constitute a copyright-infringing act.”

Oksanen notes that CIAPC had also requested an injunction to prevent the woman from infringing their clients’ copyrights in future. Had this have been granted the implications for anyone running open WiFi – domestically or in a commercial environment – could have been far-reaching. One instance of infringement could lead to an injunction, and the only way to be absolutely certain of avoiding a future breach would be to shut the system down completely.

In the event the court looked at the Finnish interpretations of several EU directives including Directive 2000/31/EC, Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC and the Copyright Enforcement Directive 2004/48/EC.

The District Court ruled that WiFi owners can not be held liable for the copyright infringing activities of third parties, an argument that still rages, for and against, in the United States.

While this ruling will be welcomed by Internet activists and network providers alike, it is still possible for CIAPC to take their case to appeal. However, should they choose to do so, Turre Legal say that taking the case to the European Court of Justice remains an option.

The ruling will be of concern to IFPI and Teosto, the Finnish Composers’ Copyright Society. They’re in the process of obtaining the identities of dozens of Pirate Bay users who allegedly shared the songs of Finland’s answer to Justin Bieber. If those alleged file-sharers are reading this story now, odds are that many of them will remember that their WiFi networks are wide open.

Source: Open WiFi Owner Not Liable For Illegal File-Sharing, Court Rules

Fans have been waiting since 2008 for the release and it’s selling well, but that won’t prevent the band from giving some tracks away for free.

Counting Crows decided to team up with BitTorrent Inc. and today they release a promotional bundle with the songs Untitled (Love Song), Like Teenage Gravity, Hospital, and Meet on the Ledge.

The download, which also includes high-resolution album artwork and liner notes from lead singer Adam Duritz, is available to BitTorrent’s 150 million users and will be bundled with all new downloads of the uTorrent client.

While this isn’t the first time artists have used BitTorrent’s promotion program to share their works for free, Counting Crows are perhaps the biggest name thus far. To find out why the band decided to embrace BitTorrent, TorrentFreak caught up with Adam Duritz.

“I’ve been a big proponent of giving songs away for a long time,” says Duritz, explaining why the band decided to share their music on BitTorrent.

While the singer doesn’t endorse people simply taking stuff, he realizes that BitTorrent can do a lot of good for musicians.

“I can dwell on the negatives, but I don’t want to miss out on the fact that there’s 150 million people who I can give songs to. You either treat it as just a money drain, like the record companies do. Or you can treat it as it actually is, which is a conduit, meaning it runs both ways.”

“You can either cry about it or make use of it. File-sharing is no different from the rest of the Internet, it is a tool that connects the entire world. It is the cure for Babel,” Duritz adds.

According to the singer the Internet is a “huge benefit” to music. Counting Crows realized this early on and started posting about their music on a message forum in 1995.

In the years that followed the music industry changed dramatically. But while the record labels have been complaining bitterly, according to the band’s frontman musicians are actually better off.

“Record business was never all that great for bands. It was always a 99 percent failure rate of bands. Even if you did do well record labels took 80 percent of your revenue and locked up your rights. And they are completely incompetent,” Duritz told TorrentFreak.

BitTorrent, the Internet and technological advances have democratized music and made it more accessible than ever before. Promotion is not centralized through the labels, but now works through bloggers, social networks and music services.

“On the Internet dependent bands can survive. Perhaps they don’t become megastars, but at least they can survive and thrive. And there’s a lot of great music out there right now.”

People make their own radio stations now according to Duritz, and BitTorrent plays a vital role there.

“If you got 150 million people on BitTorrent, then that’s the new radio station. That’s a better radio station in fact, because people have the choice to play it as much as they want and stop when they get sick of it.”

“I can’t believe everybody’s not doing it,” Duritz says, adding that it’s much better than bribing radio stations or record stores.

“It’s a no brainer to me and now that we’re an independent band we don’t have to listen to a bunch of idiots who tell us what we should or shouldn’t do. We can have smart people or we can trust ourselves.”

The Counting Crows frontman is no stranger to BitTorrent either. He knows sites like crows-town.com that are devoted to sharing his concerts, and he supports them.

“I gave birth to these websites basically because we’ve been encouraging people to tape concerts from the very beginning. We’re a good live band, so they’re going to want to listen to it. It would be great if we could sell concert recordings, but we don’t have to monetize everything,” Duritz told us.

“I have a whole wall of bootlegs in my house, not of us, but of other bands. So it would be a little hypocritical if I started getting angry at everybody else now. I think it’s a great thing and don’t know why bands have ever fought people recording shows because it’s a great advertisement for your product.”

So in part these torrent sites act as a promotional tool. And that’s exactly the reason why Counting Crows is partnering with BitTorrent.

“Giving songs away will draw people to the record, it will also draw people to the tour that’s coming up. Those are pretty big things. The fact that you can give something to that many people is not a small thing,” Duritz says.

“As an artist it’s what you’ve been wanting to do all along, which is to get your music to people.”

That said, Duritz thinks people will continue to buy music. However, they want sincere artists who charge a reasonable price, and not a band that’s backed by a record label people don’t trust.

“I believe in the future of the music business, just not the record labels,” he concludes.

For those who are interested, the Counting Crows bundle can be downloaded here.

Source: BitTorrent is the New Radio, Says Counting Crows Frontman

This meant that the previously determined jail sentences and fines handed out to Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm and Carl Lundström would stand.

With Lundström’s and Svartholm’s fates settled and Sunde’s recent plea for clemency filed, only one person’s direction was left unclear – that of Fredrik Neij.

Through a statement penned by his lawyer Jonas Nilsson, today we learn that Neij intends to take his case to the European Court.

“According to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees citizens of Sweden the freedom to receive and impart information, we believe that Frederick Neij’s right to freedom of expression has been denied him,” says Nilsson.

“According to our complaint to the European Court, The Pirate Bay’s services – to transfer non-proprietary information among users through an automated process on the Internet – is protected under that article of the Convention.”

Nilsson says that The Pirate Bay never transferred or transmitted copyright information – that was the responsibility of the site’s users. The Pirate Bay’s function, he says, was “to allow the free dissemination of information via non-copyrighted torrent files.”

The lawyer also notes that since the torrent file information itself wasn’t illegal, the function should be covered by Article 10. He adds that he will also ask for further scrutiny as to whether it was indeed correct to hold Fredrik Neij responsible for what other people did when they used The Pirate Bay.

“In our opinion, it is like being held guilty in court because someone delivered a letter with illegal content. Another, and perhaps even more relevant analogy, would be if the founders of a buying and selling site were found guilty after someone sold a stolen bicycle after it was advertised on the site,” Nilsson explains.

Nilsson believes that it’s quite rightly not easy to get cases heard before Sweden’s Supreme Court, but by hearing certain pivotal cases valuable guidance can be gained for future rulings. Because a definitive ruling would provide much-need clarity in similar cases involving liability, the Supreme Court should have heard The Pirate Bay case, Nilsson says.

“In light of the Supreme Court decision [not to hear the case], we now see no alternative but to pursue this case through to the European Court. That clear legislation or legal precedent is missing in an area that affects us all – the Internet – represents a problem for the rule of law, today and tomorrow,” Nilsson concludes.

Source: Pirate Bay Founder Takes Case To European Court

21 Jump Street is the most downloaded movie this week.

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

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent

The political proposals in the book are also the ones carried by the Green group in the European Parliament, though they originate with the Pirate Party.

Extratorrent did a story on the book, and Reddit got a story linked there with a title saying “Copyright protection is suggested to be cut from 70 to 20 years from publication”. (Which is factually wrong – the proposal is to reduce from life plus 70 to a baseline five years, extendable to 20 through registration, limiting the monopoly to commercial uses only – but still.)

What strikes me as odd, and indefensible, are the reactions of resignation in the Reddit thread.

This is a selection of the highest-voted comments:

- Nice, but it won’t happen. Publishing companies would scream bloody murder.

- This would be fantastic but will never happen because companies have a vested interest in maintaining their ability to collect royalties indefinitely.

- They can suggest anything they like, but I really see no reason why the RIAA or MPAA would listen to anything but making it longer.

I am absolutely flabbergasted that this seems to be the prevailing view. When did people forget that legislators, and not corporations, have the final say over our laws?

The copyright industry is not a stakeholder in the copyright monopoly. They are a beneficiary. Of course they’ll want more benefits.

Who gives a rat’s ass what the copyright industries want?

Their interest is not the public interest. The only reason they have been getting their way in lawmaking is that legislators have believed – up until pretty much now – that this issue is completely peripheral in public opinion, so they haven’t cared about it at all, and they have ignored this field of policymaking to let it be run by easily-lobbied public servants.

To see people confuse corporations for legislators to this degree frustrates me. There is absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t hold legislators accountable for every single button they press – and let them know that it is us, not a special interest, that determine whether they keep or lose their job.

Failing that, one can also replace them entirely, as I set out to do with a movement that has now spread to 50+ countries. That also gets their attention. Guaranteed.

But no matter what, don’t ever accept the resigned position that the copyright industries determine law. They don’t. They’ve gotten away with wishlists because politicians haven’t cared. They do care when tens of thousands of people make noise, and we can do that. We know absolutely well that we’re capable of that and much more.

If the copyright industry collapses – who cares?

The job of every entrepreneur is to make money given the current constraints of society. They don’t get to dismantle civil liberties if they fail to make money – especially if they fail to make money. No entrepreneur has the right to shape society to guarantee themselves a profit.

There will always be culture, and the artists are doing better than ever. It’s more than time to rid our economy and our net of the burden of these parasitic middlemen – and don’t ever dare think you’re powerless to do exactly that.

Source: Why Are People Resigning Before The Copyright Industries’ Will?

Billions in revenue are lost each year, they claim. But not for long if the Russian based startup “Pirate Pay” has its way. The company has developed a technology which allows them to attack existing BitTorrent swarms, making it impossible for people to share files.

The idea started three years ago when the developers were building a traffic management solution for Internet providers. The technology worked well. It was able to stop BitTorrent traffic if needed, which made the developers realize that they might have built the holy anti-piracy grail.

“After creating the prototype, we realized we could more generally prevent files from being downloaded, which meant that the program had great promise in combating the spread of pirated content,” Pirate Pay CEO Andrei Klimenko says.

With this new business model in mind the company continued to develop their product, and it didn’t take long before an investor was willing to support it. Last year Pirate Pay received a $100,000 investment from the Microsoft Seed Financing Fund.

Microsoft Russia’s president praised the innovative idea, which his company would also be able to use in the future.

With the cash injection the company continued working on their anti-piracy solution and December last Direktcya Kino was the first to hire Pirate Pay’s services. For a month Pirate Pay’s technology protected the film “Vysotsky. Thanks to God, I’m alive,” (distributed by The Walt Disney Studios Sony Pictures Releasing company) with moderate success.

The company doesn’t reveal how it works, but they appear to be flooding clients with fake information, masquerading as legitimate peers.

“We used a number of servers to make a connection to each and every P2P client that distributed this film. Then Pirate Pay sent specific traffic to confuse these clients about the real IP-addresses of other clients and to make them disconnect from each other,” Andrei Klimenko says.

The end result was that 44,845 transfers were successfully stopped. How many downloads slipped through, and whether the downloaders didn’t simply try again later is unknown. Pirate Pay don’t disclose their exact rates but say they charge between $12,000 and $50,000 depending on the scope of the project.

While Pirate Pay claim their technology is truly unique, it is not the first company to tackle BitTorrent piracy. The now defunct MediaDefender charged hundreds of thousands of dollars to attack BitTorrent trackers and upload fake torrent files.

MediaDefender was rebranded to Peer Media, and under this brand they continue to offer these and other anti-piracy services.

Whether Pirate Pay is truly different and more effective than any of the other solutions remains to be seen. Even if it’s hugely effective, the scattered nature of BitTorrent makes it practically impossible to stop all infringing downloads of a movie, while the costs may outweigh the “losses” that are prevented.

Companies that really want to make Pirates Pay are probably better off investing in improvements to their legal offers.

Article updated to emphasize that Direktcya Kino was the first client.

Source: Microsoft Funded Startup Aims to Kill BitTorrent Traffic

Napster relied on a single server to store the files every user shared, provided a central file search, and even initiated file transfers between users. Due to this single point of failure, Napster collapsed once the server was shut down by RIAA.

Fortunately, the next generation of less centralized filesharing networks was already on the horizon. On the one hand there were completely decentralized networks like Gnutella. They used query flooding to find other clients, i.e. they just sent their requests from client to client until either enough results were found or the search timed out.

Yet this advantage of a completely server-independent network topology came with the disadvantage of the network not being scalable. Simply put, you can’t search the whole network efficiently.

On the other hand there was eDonkey2000 with its server-based network (first release on September 6th, 2000). Unlike with Napster, everyone could run a server. While the existence of multiple servers meant that the network couldn’t be shut down by closing a single central point, it also had the disadvantage that users could now only search for and share files with users on the same server.

This system had similarities with BitTorrent, at a time where the tracker was the sole mechanism through which to find other peers. However, with BitTorrent (started in the year 2001) this dependence on the tracker was intended because it meant that the tracker can control who is allowed to join the swarm, how many peers each client gets, etc…

The eDonkey2000 Network had a different design goal – a fully decentralized and yet scalable network. In this spirit eDonkey2000 started a new project called ‘Flock’ in May 2002. After beta testing it was renamed ‘Overnet’ and finally merged with the original eDonkey2000 client in August 2004.

In 2002 a new and rapidly growing client entered the ed2k network, a term which refers only to the server-based part of the eDonkey2000 network. An open source client for the ed2k network – our birthday-client eMule – was founded on May 13th, 2002 – 10 years ago today.

In June 2004, ed2k had about 2 million users while eDonkey2000’s Overnet network only had about 800,000 users. So eMule was the leading client in the ed2k network and together with BitTorrent it dominated the following years of filesharing.

Both networks, BitTorrent and eMule, slowly headed towards a more decentralized structure. In order to make files from all servers available to every user, eMule added keyword search via UDP to query all servers and source exchange between clients via TCP to get all available sources for a specific file. BitTorrent adopted the latter in peer exchange.

Early 2004 eMule implemented Kademlia, a decentralized DHT-like key-value store capable of finding sources as well as performing keyword search, thus making ed2k servers completely obsolete. Once again, BitTorrent headed in the same direction, implementing DHT in 2005.

DHT marks a revolutionary step in filesharing. Not just because you can download a file with only its hash (and a few nodes to bootstrap the network), but now a decentralized scalable network becomes available. While decentralized networks like Gnutella were capable of finding information using query flooding in O(n), DHT finds information in O(log2(n)). So if the size of the network doubles, only 1 additional request is needed on average – regardless of the actual size of the network.

The following example illustrates this advantage: Say you have a network with 2 million users and you want to find information about a specific file which unfortunately doesn’t exist in the network (i.e. no user shares this file). Using query flooding every client in the network has to be asked before we can be sure that the file isn’t available. Usually the search just runs into a time-out before, assuming (but not knowing) that the file isn’t available.

Thanks to DHT you only have to ask about 21 nodes (log2(2 mio)) before being sure that the file isn’t available in the entire network. Even better, this was the mathematically worst case scenario. Usually the actual number of required requests is much lower because on your search path you’ll likely reach the node closest to your requested file after only 3-4 requests (empirical evidence on eMule’s current Kademlia).

The next feature we think torrents should adopt is a real DHT-based keyword search. Tribler already made a step in that direction. However, their torrents are being broadcasted to other known clients which results in a search with bad scalability.

We already know that after switching to magnet links only, The Pirate Bay has a total size of about 90 MB. Now think of those 90 MB being stored decentralized. A network with millions of nodes in which each node stores a few hundred Kilobytes means you have thousands of replicas of each torrent entry.

This ensures each entry can be found, even if many nodes leave the network simultaneously. Unfortunately, all previous decentralized search implementations had huge amounts of spam in their search results. This is where we can learn from the torrent community. Sites like The Pirate Bay provide trusted search results.

In a completely decentralized search without any spam they would simply continue to provide this functionality using public-key cryptography to sign torrents. A user relying on his favorite torrent site’s search results would simply add its public key to his torrent client, thus allowing the client to check the signature of each torrent search result and filtering all fakes.

In this completely decentralized future a torrent site such as The Pirate Bay would simply be a laptop with average computing power connecting itself to the internet once every few hours to sign new torrents with its private key. Think about how hard it is just to trace such a “torrent site”. Shutting it down is practically impossible.

We are currently working on a client which will offer the above mentioned torrent search. It is currently in a closed alpha testing phase and will soon enter public beta tests.

—

About the authors:

David Xanatos is one of the founding members of the Austrian Pirate Party; he lives in Vienna and works as a Physicist at the university by day, and develops file sharing applications by night. He is mostly known for his NeoMule Mod.

Ekliptor is a computer scientist from Munich. He has developed many eMule Mods in the past and is currently researching weaknesses in eMule’s Kademlia and countermeasures at university. Their current project is called “NeoLoader” and able to download files from BitTorrent, eMule and one-click hosters.

Source: eMule: A Decade of File-Sharing Innovations

Following an earlier court ruling ordering two of the country’s largest ISPs to block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay, the Court ordered a further five ISPs to block TPB IP addresses and 20 domain names Thursday. The Court then went on to make a decision that was perhaps even more controversial than the first.

The Dutch Pirate Party had been running a proxy service to facilitate access to the now-blocked Pirate Bay, but following pressure from anti-piracy group BREIN their activities were outlawed this week by the Court. The Pirate Party was ordered to shutdown its reverse proxy indefinitely and block Pirate Bay domains and IP-addresses from its generic proxy.

However, in a decision that raised eyebrows, Judge Chris Hensen also banned the Party from using their own website to list the locations of other websites that allow the public to circumvent the blockade.

This decision by Henson – which some observers believe amounts to a curtailment of freedom of speech – is not the first the Judge has made of this nature. In 2010, movie studio Eyeworks won its lawsuit against Dutch Usenet community FTD. In that verdict, Judge Hensen ruled that by allowing users to talk about a copyrighted movie’s location on Usenet, FTD was effectively publishing the movie as if they had actually hosted it on their own servers.

After the ruling it transpired that Judge Henson and Dirk Visser, the lawyer for the movie studio, had a closer relationship than had been expected. Visser, who also represented BREIN in their victory over Mininova, had been running courses for copyright specialists where Judge Hensen was once one of the teachers.

Of course, now Judge Hensen has delivered a similar ruling, his connections with Visser are being re-examined, not least by Pirate Party founder Rick Falkvinge who is absolutely scathing.

“This is truly mind-boggling: not only was the plaintiff and judge personally and closely acquainted, the plaintiff in a controversial copyright monopoly case was running a commercial anti-piracy outfit together with the judge in the case,” Falkvinge writes.

“Money was involved. Commercial interest was involved. The judge was, as it appears from this brochure for the quite expensive course, getting money. From the plaintiff. Shortly after the case. In a directly related matter. That makes the judge not only corrupt, but textbook corrupt,” Falkvinge adds.

Claims of bias have hounded many big copyright-related cases in recent years, but for whatever reason have never gained any traction. In 2009 following the conviction of the founders of The Pirate Bay, it was revealed that two of the four judges set to hear their appeal were members of pro-copyright groups. The Supreme Court eventually decided that this would not affect their judgment.

The year before it was revealed that police officer Jim Keyzer, the leader and key witness in the initial Pirate Bay investigation, had been recently employed by Warner Bros, one of the plaintiffs in the case. The controversy deepened when it was discovered that his employment with the studio was only temporary – he later returned to the police to head up an IT Crime unit.

This so-called revolving door phenomenon has raised its head time and again in the past couple of years. In March 2011, U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell – a former RIAA lobbyist and anti-piracy company boss – delivered a helpful ruling for potential copyright trolls.

Then later that month it was revealed that a former music industry lobbyist had been appointed head of a unit dealing with copyright and enforcement issues at the European Commission.

During early May commenting on the case against Megaupload, law Professor Eric Goldman bemoaned “the revolving door between government and the content industry.”

Source: Pirate Bay ‘Censorship’ Judge is Corrupt, Claims Pirate Party Founder

The former congressman pointed out that the film industry was able to thrive because of intellectual property protections.

“The ability to give birth to an idea and convert it into economic success, whether it is the content of a film or the technology of the internet, depends on copyright and patent protection,” he said, referring to the history of US film.

We thought that was ironic. Why? Because Hollywood was founded by a group of independent filmmakers who “fled” from Edison’s patents, among other things. The full story (see Copyhype) is richer, but it’s a well-known fact that those who now rule Hollywood refused to obey the patents.

To emphasize the irony we described Hollywood’s founders as “thieves” and “pirates,” using quotation marks. Aside from these terms, the events described in our article are mostly undisputed. In no way did we say that this history justifies modern-day piracy, we simply pointed out that Dodd’s comments were unfortunate.

The MPAA, however, doesn’t like to be called pirates. In a recent blog post they refer to the Copyhype post, claiming that what we and others such as Lawrence Lessig wrote is all lies. We are thieves.

“If you ask the operators of The Pirate Bay and their apologists, they’ll say Hollywood was built by a band of pirates, fleeing stringent East Coast patent protections to a free and open land to create at will. This theory conveniently parallels their own existence, as they seek to justify profiting from digital theft.”

And these thieves are wrong, the MPAA claims.

Hollywood’s founders were no pirates, but freedom fighters who rebelled against a “copyright” monopoly.

“The patents at issue were held by the Motion Picture Patents Company, which, through restrictive tie-in agreements and licensing practices, severely impeded independent filmmakers from entering the market.”

Hmmm, that sounds familiar.

These independent filmmakers lost the first patent lawsuit, but eventually the court sided with them.

“The status quo was challenged, and shortly afterwards, the Supreme Court determined that MPPC’s licensing practices give it ‘a potential power for evil over’ movie producers which ‘would be gravely injurious to th[e] public interest.’ This 1917 ruling severely undermined MPPC’s unfair business practices.”

Fair enough, but the MPAA’s version of the truth doesn’t change anything about the fact that the founders of Hollywood were challenging existing patents. That they won in the end doesn’t mean that patents weren’t violated in the years before.

So Dodd’s comment that “the ability to give birth to an idea and convert it into economic success, whether it is the content of a film or the technology of the internet, depends on copyright and patent protection,” is still rather unfortunate.

Especially because Dodd specifically referenced a time where patents were infringed en masse.

Also, the MPAA’s response in their recent blog post is in itself unfortunate. The lobby group says that Hollywood’s freedom fighters beat Edison because the court agreed that the MPPC had “a potential power for evil over” movie producers which “would be gravely injurious to th[e] public interest.”

Interesting, because today the MPAA is also quite powerful. They are the moral judge who decides what films the public is allowed to see. Not just for the major studios they represent, but also films of independent studios who are NOT an MPAA member company.

Through its ratings system they can make or break films, a “potential power for evil” for sure. Just ask South Park creator Matt Stone or watch “This Film is Not Yet Rated” to get an idea of what’s going on behind the scenes.

Fin.

Source: MPAA: We’re No Pirates! You Are Thieves! Or?

By filing a mass-BitTorrent lawsuit the company became one of the many copyright holders who together have sued a quarter million people in the country since early 2010. In recent months, Wiley has continued to file yet more suits against alleged BitTorrent pirates.

Up until recently Wiley has enjoyed an easy ride in court. In several cases the New York federal court was quick to allow the book publisher to subpoena Internet providers for the personal details of account holders. With these details, Wiley can then approach the defendants and negotiate an out-of-court settlement.

But not if it’s up to Verizon.

While most Internet providers generally don’t object to a court-ordered subpoena, Verizon has refused to hand over the personal details of accused subscribers. One of the reasons given by Verizon is that Wiley is demanding the information for improper purposes, namely “to harass, cause unnecessary delay, or needlessly increase the cost of litigation.”

In addition, the Internet provider doubts whether the subpoena will lead to the discovery of “relevant information.” In other words, Verizon seems to doubt that the person who pays for the account is also the infringer.

This issue was also raised by New York Judge Gary Brown in another case last week, in which he concluded that an IP-address is not a person. In his order Brown argued that in mass-BitTorrent lawsuits it is simply unknown whether the person linked to the IP-address has anything to do with the alleged copyright infringements.

Besides the two points above Verizon makes five more objections, including concerns over privacy. The company asserts that Wiley is seeking “information that is protected from disclosure by third parties’ rights of privacy and protections guaranteed by the First Amendment.”

For its part, Wiley is not convinced by Verizon’s protest and has asked the court to compel Verizon to respond to the subpoenas. To discuss the issue, Judge Katherine Forrest has scheduled a telephone conference for early next week.

Verizon’s objection is noteworthy because the action is not borne merely out of self-interest. Previously Time Warner also objected to mass-BitTorrent subpoenas where they had to produce the details of thousands of subscribers, arguing that this process was too time consuming.

However, in this case the burden on the ISP is relatively low, as Wiley says it only asked for the details of 10 account holders for which Verizon would receive compensation of $45 each.

Should Judge Katherine Forrest agree with Verizon’s objections it would be a serious blow to Wiley’s ongoing litigation campaign against BitTorrent users in the Southern District of New York.

Source: Verizon Refuses to Identify Alleged BitTorrent Pirates

For one, businessman Carl Lundström, the road ahead is certain. His sentence will be served electronically tagged in a Stockholm apartment. For three others – Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neik – questions remain.

Peter Sunde was scheduled to begin his 8 month jail sentence in the Västervik Norra facility Wednesday, but at least for now that won’t be going ahead. Sunde has filed a plea with the Swedish government requesting clemency, citing health concerns and fears for his fledgling micro-payment business, Flattr.

“The idea for the company came from Peter himself, and he has a tremendous commitment to it,” Sunde’s representative writes in the request filed with the Department of Justice.

It is the recognizable name and reputation of the 33-year-old, the plea continues, that has enabled Flattr to gain traction in the market, a personal presence the company will need to maintain in order to continue moving forward.

“Peter’s name and reputation in the industry will open many doors. The company has received a substantial amount of risk capital which has mostly been used to develop the product. After about two years development, the product is now basically ready to begin shipping to partners and large sites. A prerequisite for further development is that Peter is left on the company,” the plea concludes.

Sunde adds that if the authorities can’t see their way to a full pardon, a delay before he has to serve his sentence would be the next best thing. The specific nature of his health concerns have not been detailed publicly.

Site co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm was previously ordered to spend 1 year in Mariefred prison roughly 65 km from Stockholm. His sentence was due to begin January 2nd 2012 but he became untraceable. A new deadline of April 18th was set for Svartholm to hand himself in but that date came and went with no further news.

In addition to prison sentences there is also the outstanding issues of damages. Recently it was revealed that the compensation amount the Pirate Bay founders are required to hand over to the movie and recording company plaintiffs has been growing steadily. Due to interest being added since May 2006, as of February 2012 the amount owed had jumped from roughly $6.9 million dollars to nearly $11 million.

Source: Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Requests Pardon

In an attempt to take these proxies offline the Hollywood funded anti-piracy group BREIN obtained an injunction against one of the sites and used this to convince others to shut down as well.

The list of secondary targets included the local Pirate Party, who initially refused to give in to the demands but were later ordered to take their reverse proxy offline by the court. The Pirate Party claimed that the case against them amounted to a restriction of their freedom of speech, and sued BREIN over the order.

Today the Court of The Hague delivered its verdict, which confirms most of the earlier injunction. The Pirate Party is now forbidden from encouraging the public to circumvent the Pirate Bay blockade and from listing or hosting tools that can enable others to do so.

The Court specifically ruled that the Party’s reverse proxy has to remain offline. It was further ordered that Pirate Bay domains and IP-addresses have to be filtered from the Pirate Party’s generic proxy. In addition the Pirate Party can’t link to other websites that allow the public to bypass the blockade. These orders are only valid when paired with an encouragement to circumvent.

Should the Pirate Party fail to comply with the Court’s ruling it faces fines of €5,000 per day to a maximum penalty of €250,000.

“For many who where hoping for the law to come to the rescue of basic civil liberties, today must be a rough awakening,” Pirate Party chairman Dirk Poot told TorrentFreak in a comment. “This ridiculously broad verdict allows BREIN to take down any site that is posting information that displeases their censors.”

“A first in Dutch law is that a judge has now also ordered a generic proxy to filter internet traffic as well. BREIN has created jurisprudence that will now allow them to come after any open proxy they have set their sights on.”

Pirate Bay proxies are a hot topic, and not just in the Netherlands. Last week the UK High Court also ordered local ISPs to prevent subscribers from accessing The Pirate Bay website. As a result the proxy site of the UK Pirate Party became overloaded with visitors.

Whether BREIN’s equivalent in the UK will act against this and other proxies is unknown.

The ruling against the Dutch Pirate Party is the second today regarding The Pirate Bay. This morning the Court of The Hague ordered five more Dutch Internet providers to censor the torrent site. This means that pretty much all Dutch Internet users are now affected by the blockade.

The Pirate Bay, meanwhile, continues to share alternative means for blocked users to access the site. At the same time, the press attention is resulting in millions of extra visitors for the notorious BitTorrent site.

Source: Court Forbids Linking to Pirate Bay Proxies

To avoid a negative and potentially damaging legal precedent, Ziggo was joined in the case by rival ISP XS4ALL. After legal wrangling and initial progress, during November 2011 the case went before the Court of The Hague and in January 2012 it delivered its ruling.

While the ISPs were ordered to block access to The Pirate Bay, both immediately announced they would appeal. BREIN, on the other hand, used the momentum to announce that it would sue even more ISPs to force them to censor TPB too.

Today the Court of The Hague ruled that BREIN’s latest ISP targets – UPC, KPN, Tele2, T-Mobile and Telfort – must also block The Pirate Bay.

The blocking order is broad covering 20 specific domains including ThePirateBay.org, ThePirateBay.se, ThePirateBay.com, DePiraatBaii.be and TheMusicBay.net. BREIN also asked for a total of three IP addresses to be blocked, but the Court only granted a block against two after it decided that one of addresses carried only Pirate Bay-owned content such as website images and CSS files.

A request from BREIN to be permitted to add further IP addresses and domains to the ruling was opposed by the ISPs and ultimately denied by the Court. This means that The Pirate Bay could simply add a new domain or IP-address to circumvent the block.

And that’s not the only way the blockade can be circumvented.

In a short statement welcoming the decision, BREIN said the Court’s ruling was good “for innovation and creation.”

While it’s believed that UPC, KPN, Tele2, T-Mobile and Telfort will appeal the decision, they will still have to implement the blockage in the interim period. The ISPs have 10 days to do so or face maximum fines of 250,000 euros.

Source: Five More Dutch ISPs Given 10 Days To Censor The Pirate Bay

“Perfect 10 is offering $25,000 (twenty-five thousand dollars) to the person who provides us with the most compelling non-public evidence of Google illegal conduct between now and February 28, 2012.”

“The type of evidence we are looking for would be emails between a webmaster and Google, showing that Google aided or condoned copyright infringement, or that Google was involved in other illegal activities not known to the general public.”

However, judging from the recent court updates this offer didn’t bring in the much-desired evidence. Both parties agreed to dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning it can no longer be appealed. “Perfect 10 agrees not to commence any future lawsuit against Google in any court arising from any such Google act or omission on or before the date of dismissal of this action, or any such DMCA notices sent by Perfect 10 on or before the date of dismissal of this action,” the court filing reads. Whether the dismissal follows on an out-of-court settlement is unknown. A Google spokesperson didn’t answer this specific question, instead offering the following comment. “We always asserted that there was no merit to this case. Plaintiff seemed to agree: last week he asked for a dismissal of the case with prejudice.” Another plausible reason for the dismissal could be that Perfect 10 was feeling the heat, as the court ordered the company to open its books and provide full insight into all internal communications regarding the court case. While the dismissal marks the end of a landmark case, Perfect 10 shows no sign of slowing down their legal actions. The company has a long history of copyright cases targeting companies such as Megaupload, Amazon, and Hotfile. Last month Russia’s Google equivalent Yandex joined these ranks, and earlier this week Perfect 10 sued the microblogging platform Tumblr. And so it continues.

Source: Iconic Piracy Suit Against Google Dismissed, Despite $25,000 Bounty

The site has its base in Argentina, where it is the country’s 65th most-popular site. However, it is in Chile, where it is the 135th most popular site, that it generated big headlines recently.

In March, an alleged operator of Cuevana.tv was arrested by Chilean police, the culmination of a two month investigation prompted by TV show giant HBO.

Christian Alvarez, a 26-year-old student, was claimed to be one of nine alleged administrators of Cuevana.tv. The other eight, authorities claim, are stationed in Argentina.

Alvarez, a student at the University of Chile currently pursuing a Master’s degree, denied being a site admin, instead describing himself as just a user with some extra privileges. He also insists that he made no money from his activities at Cuevana.tv.

Despite his protestations Alvarez was subsequently charged with breaches of copyright law and forbidden from leaving the country while the investigation against him continued.

For their part, HBO said they were very happy with the arrest of Alvarez and congratulated the police on their action to protect intellectual property rights. But things quickly went downhill. Following his arrest, nothing could be found to link Alvarez to infringement of HBO’s copyrights. Perhaps worst still, Cuevana.tv continued to operate uninterrupted. Yesterday there was more bad news.

“Luckily everything went well for me,” said Alvarez in a statement. “A decision was made to suspend the case, because there was no evidence to support the accusations.”

While the 26-year-old will now go free, it seems that HBO didn’t leave completely empty-handed. They only agreed to dismiss their action against Alvarez after he agreed to abide by a set of fairly unusual conditions.

Firstly, Alvarez had to agree not to visit Cuevana.tv at all for the next 12 months, nor get involved in any other similar sites. Secondly and perhaps most controversially, Alvarez will have to give lectures on copyright issues to children in schools.

Commenting on the case, a spokesperson for the Argentinian Pirate Party told TorrentFreak that Cuevana.tv provides an important alternative distribution platform for local independents competing against Hollywood domination.

“Hollywood’s movies occupy all the space in theaters leaving little opportunity or decent running lengths for local films,” he told us.

To this end, Tomas Escobar, the alleged owner of Cuevana.tv, tried to reach agreements with local producers and called out to them to distribute their films through his platform. During December 2011, Cuevana.tv hosted the exclusive official release of the local movie ‘Stephanie’ directed by Maximilian Gerscovich.

Following recent events it’s unclear whether Cuevana will be able to continue this initiative. Authorities in Chile say evidence gathered in the recent case will now be sent to Argentinian authorities for their investigation.

Source: Streaming Site ‘Admin’ Freed, But Agrees 1 Year Hiatus With HBO

The notorious BitTorrent site is encouraging visitors to take part in the survey into people’s file-sharing habits and their views on copyright enforcement. The study is a follow up to a similar survey last year, in which 75,000 people from all over the world participated.

One of the main goals of the project is to counter entertainment industry propaganda. The researchers want to document how the Internet creates new social norms in society, and to what extent these norms are, or should be, reflected in relevant legislation.

“This research is first of all aiming at creating a better base of knowledge for policy makers. Without adequate information it is impossible to adapt the legal systems in a legitimate way,” Måns Svensson, PhD in Sociology of Law at Lund and study manager told TorrentFreak.

“Further, this research is important as a counterweight to the propaganda produced by various actors. Through the follow-up survey we are able to register changes and trends; and also we have the opportunity to ask some new questions, for example related to the recent demands on UK ISPs to block The Pirate Bay.”

Svensson told TorrentFreak that the Pirate Bay is the perfect partner to carry out this type of research.

Among other things, the first study revealed that Pirate Bay users show a great interest in VPN services and other anonymizers. With this second survey the Cybernorms group wants to see how the findings of the first study developed over time.

“We are very curious of how the use of anonymity services has developed during the last year. A survey conducted earlier this year in Sweden indicated a growing use among file sharers of VPN services for anonymization. We think that we have reason to believe that intensified enforcement strategies will accelerate this development,” Svensson said.

In addition, the survey also give the researchers the opportunity to delve deeper in people’s responses to recent Pirate Bay blockades, such as the one that was ordered in the UK last week.

“We are also curious to learn more about the specific techniques used for online anonymity and the techniques for avoiding blocking. This time we are breaking down the data on a national level which means that we will be able to compare legal strategies with the actual behavioral changes.”

Svensson stresses that he and his colleagues have a responsibility as social scientists to monitor the responses to more repressive anti-piracy laws. Thus far this has resulted in a few interesting insights. For example, they found that changing the law doesn’t mean that people’s norms will change.

Instead, the gap between law and file-sharer’s morals widens.

“Our research has shown that tougher legislation actually does have an effect on the amount that people file share copyright protected media. However, this legislation has no effect on the social norms of society,” Svensson said.

“People still don’t think it is wrong to share files. What we have is a deterrent effect due to enforcement actions, but an effect that lacks societal support. This is a dangerous development that in the long run risks undermining the trust in the democratic society.”

Readers who want to help out with the research are invited to take part in the survey. Next week all results of the first survey will be published to the public.

Source: The Pirate Bay Partners With Academic Researchers to Counter Propaganda

Later this month the now 29-year-old will go to court to face charges of copyright infringement on Hollywood blockbusters such as Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

According to the Anti-Piracy Union, the piracy activities of Stainless date back to 2006 and are on an unprecedented scale. He allegedly uploaded thousands of movies and TV shows to cyberlocker file-hosting sites before publishing their links online in order to facilitate downloads.

Initially Stainless is reported to have used RapidShare and Hotfile, but later used a web service called Multiload to upload to several sites at once. One of the main sites listed by Multiload is Hellshare and Stainless reportedly had around 11,500 files stored there. Exactly how many of those were infringing is unclear.

Nevertheless, Stainless still stands accused of significant infringement. He is alleged to be responsible for the piracy of more than 2000 movie and TV shows including Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and a selection of local movies. Not helping Stainless’ case is the fact he was the moderator of so-called ‘warez’ forum.

As is increasingly common in these cases, the damages claim made by the studios is significant. They claim that Stainless cost them more than $4 million and as a result when he goes on trial later this month he will face between six months and five years in prison, plus a fine.

“The way they estimated the damages is simply ridiculous,” Mikulas Ferjencik, vice-president of the Czech Pirate Party told TorrentFreak.

“The Czech Pirate Party believes that it should be up to the copyright monopoly owners to prove that they were actually damaged by downloads. We think that the current setup, where copyright monopoly owners receive the ‘average market price’ multiplied by three, is unconstitutional.”

The Czech Pirate Party, know for their provocative actions including setting up their own file-sharing sites, have courted controversy again recently.

In setting up their new web portal located at Pirat.cz, they blatantly copied the design of the Czech Republic’s biggest search engine, Seznam.cz, fueling a considerable online debate and an interesting outcome.

“Seznam.cz admitted that what we did is actually fully legal and they even drew another version of the Piráti.cz logo for us using their font – the one we originally used was just an imitation,” Ferjencik concludes.

Source: Major Cyberlocker Movie Pirate Faces 5 Years In Prison

Immediately thousands of fans jumped on the release and according to figures collated by TorrentFreak, in the days that followed it was downloaded half a million times. While this may very well be a record for a “CAM” movie, it failed to exceed the download numbers of several other movies that were available in higher quality.

Record or not, the movie’s distributer Disney must have been terrified by this early release. However, this weekend the suits at the studio were able to breathe a sign of relief, or rather, start popping open the Champagne.

With more than $200 million in box office revenue, The Avengers had the most successful first weekend in movie history. It broke the record set by Harry Potter last year by more than $30 million, despite the “massive” piracy.

But is this really such a big surprise? Not when you look at the numbers.

Of all the people who downloaded a pirate copy of the film about 20% came from the US. This means that roughly 100,000 Americans have downloaded a copy online through BitTorrent. Now, IF all these people bought a movie ticket instead then box office revenue would be just 0.5% higher.

Not much of an impact, and even less when you consider that these “pirates” do not all count as a lost sale.

We don’t think that there are many movie fans who see a low quality camcorded version of a movie as a true alternative to watching a film in a movie theater. The two are totally different experiences, and not direct competition at all.

If anything, downloading a camcorded movie could be compared to downloading a low quality bootleg of a concert. People who download these are collectors, passionate fans, or just curious. But in no way do these bootlegs seriously hurt concert attendances.

The same might be said for advance leaks of games. These pre-release copies are often downloaded by tens of thousands of people, but not necessarily those who refuse to pay. The people who download these buggy and sometimes hardly playable games are often curious game fanatics who tend to buy the official game when it comes out.

The claim that camcorded films are killing the movie industry is nonsense and spending millions of dollars on anti-camcording technologies is simply not worth it.

But does this mean that piracy is not an issue for the movie industry at all? Well not so fast.

A recent study showed that the US box office is not suffering from movie piracy, but that there is a detrimental effect on international box office figures. The researchers attribute this impact to the wide release gaps, which sometimes result in a high quality DVD copy being available on pirate sites while a movie is still showing in theaters.

These high quality copies are more likely to “compete” with movie theater attendance and if a movie is not showing in local theaters at all, it definitely has the potential to impact future attendance.

This is even more true for the DVD-aftermarket and VOD sales. High quality pirated copies are direct competition and can impact revenues.

The challenge for the movie industry is to make legal offerings more appealing than pirated counterparts. Of course it may not always be able to compete with “free,” but there is still a lot of ground to make up when it comes to availability and quality of legal offerings.

But in no way are camcorded copies killing the US movie industry.

Source: The Avengers: Why Pirates Failed To Prevent A Box Office Record

These evils take many forms, from rich African dignitaries looking to share their wealth with strangers, to a worried ‘PayPal’ advising users to enter their username and password to ensure their accounts are still secure.

In the file-sharing world, however, things are often a little more subtle. People’s bank accounts aren’t usually emptied, but novices to the pastime are often taken for a ride for relatively small sums of money by people out to make a quick buck. Often these people take advantage of changes in the market, upsets in the status quo, and times of uncertainty to deliver their payload.

When the blockage of The Pirate Bay in the Netherlands became the hot topic in recent weeks, thousands of people were looking for ways to access the site. Inevitably lists of proxies appeared, most of which worked particularly well. But thanks to opportunists, some were problematic.

Although perhaps not technically a straightforward proxy, one site – ThePirateBay.ee (note the .ee extension) – became particularly popular. The site first appeared during the last quarter of 2011 and was an almost perfect clone of TPB with identical functionality. Intermittently, however, it pulled a sly little trick.

Sometimes the magnet / torrent links would disappear and up would come a box that wouldn’t clear until people made a ‘donation’. Seasoned Pirate Bay users aren’t so easily fooled of course, but countless others have been sucked in. TorrentFreak asked The Pirate Bay about this site and they weren’t impressed.

“Charging money for free downloads is against the whole philosophy of the internets. We do not condone anything like that. This site is a bad copy of other sites, like TPB, and it’s totally meaningless. Go for another site,” they told us.

The .EE is not the only fly in the ointment either. The Pirate Bay now say that they’ve found at least three sites charging for access. It also seems that in return the team are having a little fun at those sites’ expense.

The TPB crew say they have “re-hijacked” visitors to one and are now directing them back to their official blog. Furthermore, ThePirateBay.ee appears to have been visited by a pirate David Blaine who has made all ‘their’ content disappear.

However, just in case the .EE data reappears in a second puff of smoke, Greasemonkey users can use a couple of scripts to remove cash demands and replace them with torrent and magnet links instead. Really, though, it’s better not to use the site at all.

As the proxy wars heat up, The Pirate Bay renamed itself The Hydra Bay today, linking off its main page to PirateReverse.info, an information site dedicated to helping people to access not just TPB, but several other leading torrent sites too.

Source: Pirate Bay Slaps Pathetic Proxies and Scammy Copies