DCHublist.com News

MPAA Unhappy With Googles Opposition to Anti-American Copyri..

2011-05-20T19:29:17Z

MPAA Unhappy With Google's Opposition to Anti-American Copyright Legislation

Most technologists, bloggers, journalists, and in general, those who support the First Amendment of the US Constitution, were adamantly against the CIOCA Act - or the "Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act". The bill would have given the Department of Justice, and indeed copyright holders, the arbitrary right to infringe on free speech by shutting down website deemed to be infringing - all without the benefit of due process.

The internet celebrated when CIOCA was died when the last year's Congress went out of session. But hey, there's a new class in town, and this year's Congress has reintroduced CIOCA. This time, it's virtually the same game with a different name - the Protect IP Act, or PIPA for short.

Much like the CIOCA act, PIPA is being near-universally derided by just about everyone who believes in the US Constitution and the Amendments that grant us the freedoms to participate in a democratic society. One slight different between PIPA from CIOCA is that PIPA concentrates its efforts on foreign websites. As recent domain seizures in the US have already proven, the authorities already have enough power to drop US websites. But PIPA goes much further than this.

What PIPA would create is the Great Firewall of America. US authorities, on the behest of a copyright complaint or other legal action, or even their own behest, can file an action to force DNS (Directory Name Service) providers to block certain websites deemed infringing. You see, when you enter a domain name in your browser, it needs to know the IP address of the website - a domain name (say, Slyck.com), means nothing to FireFox. It needs to talk to the DNS provider first, reference the domain name to the IP address, and bam - you're connected. One of the provisions of PIPA would prevent this from happening (but you can still connect via the sites IP address...)

Also being targeted are credit card processors and "search interactive services". That means sites like Google could also be forced to remove or block content - something Google flipped out about yesterday. From Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt:

"if there is a law that requires DNS [domain name systems, the protocol that allows users to connect to websites], to do X and it’s passed by both houses of congress and signed by the president of the United States and we disagree with it then we would still fight it...If it's a request the answer is we wouldn't do it, if it's a discussion we wouldn't do it."

Good for Google - and indeed good for the opposition to PIPA. The stronger the anti-PIPA camp, the less chance this has of becoming law. The MPAA caught wind of Schmit's comments, prompting a blog post in response. From Michael O’Leary, the MPAA's executive vice president for government affairs:

"Is Eric Schmidt really suggesting that if Congress passes a law and President Obama signs it, Google wouldn’t follow it? As an American company respected around the world, it’s unfortunate that, at least according to its executive chairman’s comments, Google seems to think it’s above America’s laws.

We’ve heard this ‘but the law doesn’t apply to me’ argument before – but usually, it comes from content thieves, not a Fortune 500 company. Google should know better. And the notion that China would use a bi-partisan, narrowly tailored bill as a pretext for censorship is laughable, as Google knows, China does what China does."

He actually has a good point about Google and China - considering Schmit further made a comparison between this bill and the Great Firewall of China. Rather curious considering Google's own work helped maintain this policy, however to Google's credit, they no longer collaborate with the Communist Chinese government.

From the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge:

"This new provision gives private parties the ability to get injunctions against credit card companies [and] ad network[s]...that serve targeted sites. One of the few upsides of the old bill was the fact that those who trusted the prosecutorial discretion of the government could take solace in the fact that only a foolhardy federal prosecutor would go after the edge cases of Internet entrepreneurs whose business models might be in good faith, though they ruffled the feathers of rightsholders. With the introduction of a private right of action, the injunctions issuing from this bill can now be called forth at the litigious whim of any copyright holder."

Aside from the political bickering, the PIPA act as it is currently written is wholly inadequate to confront the perceived issues of internet piracy. Although the MPAA claims the provisions of the bill are narrow, they are anything but. The bill is clearly written with copyright holders in mind, while side stepping the virtues of due process. Americans deserve better than this.

Comcast Users Blocked From The Pirate Bay

2011-05-20T19:25:27Z

Comcast Users Blocked From The Pirate Bay

It's Com-Castic time for Comcast Pirate Bay Users.

May 12
Starting few hours ago, Comcast subscribers began reporting issues with accessing The Pirate Bay.

Although downtime is nothing new for users of the popular BitTorrent site, this time around the connectivity issues appear to be affecting only a select group.

Several tests and numerous user reports reveal that Comcast subscribers from all across the United States are unable to connect to The Pirate Bay. The traceroute from Comcast connections stops at thepiratebay.piratpartiet.se, as it’s supposed to, but The Pirate Bay website does not appear.

Further tests show that the blockade is not DNS related. What is actually causing the issue is uncertain at this point.

Although there’s been a lot of talk about censorship lately, it seems doubtful that this is an intentional blockade on Comcast’s part. That said, there is clearly a mismatch between the Comcast network and The Pirate Bay site which leaves access to the rest of the Internet unaffected.

TorrentFreak spoke to The Pirate Bay team who confirmed that there’s a significant drop in visitors from the U.S. They are currently investigating the issue to see if there’s anything they can do on their end.

When it comes to BitTorrent blocking, Comcast already has quite a reputation. In 2007 TorrentFreak broke the news that Comcast was actively blocking BitTorrent traffic. Comcast initially denied, but later admitted its wrongdoings.

Comcast’s BitTorrent blocking fueled the Net Neutrality debates and eventually resulted in an FCC investigation and various lawsuits. A class action lawsuit was settled by the ISP who reserved a $16 million fund for affected subscribers.

In the light of all the previous legal issues it therefore seems unlikely that Comcast has ventured out on its own to block The Pirate Bay website.

When there’s more information available on the current issues we’ll update this article. In the meantime Comcast users can access the site through Anonymouse and other proxies.

Update: It appears that many Rogers users in Canada have problems accessing the site as well.

Sony: PlayStation Network to Resume May 31st

2011-05-10T15:19:19Z

Spokesperson Shigenori Yoshida said it plans to fully restore service by the end of the month. Company wants to ensure complete integrity of the system.

The Sony PlayStation Network has been down for almost 3 weeks now, and according to a report it appears that users will have to wait three weeks more.

The PSN network was shuttered April 20th after it was discovered that hackers had breached the network’s security, and that over 70 million accounts may have been comprised – including credit card information.

Sony said a week ago that some services would soon be available, but it decided to delay the move in order to ensure system security which it says is "vital for the process of restoration."

"Additional comprehensive system checks and testing are still required, and we must complete that process before bringing the systems online," it says.

According to spokesperson Shigenori Yoshida, it now plans to fully restore PSN services by May 31st.

Sony has already announced a "Welcome Back" program for affected users to ”thank its customers for their patience and loyalty.” It includes a combination of free entertainment and service offerings as well as 30 days of free PlayStation Plus premium service for existing PlayStation Network customers. It’s also offered a year’s worth of identity theft protection.

In the meantime, Sony so far faces at least three class-action lawsuits. The first two, both filed in California courtrooms, accuse Sony of negligence for allowing a breach to occur in the first place, and for falling to inform users in a timely manner after it occurred. The third alleges breach of privacy.

Sony: 25 Million Sony Online Entertainment Accounts Compromi..

2011-05-10T15:12:10Z

Says personal information from approximately 24.6 million subscribers to its PC games network may have been stolen, as well as “certain information from an outdated database from 2007.”

As if hacker intrusion into Sony’s PlayStation network wasn’t enough, the company announced yesterday that the Sony Online Entertainment PC games network was also compromised. Today Sony said the hackers may have stolen customer information on 24.6 million subscribers.

“This information, which was discovered by engineers and security consultants reviewing SOE systems, showed that personal information from approximately 24.6 million SOE accounts may have been stolen, as well as certain information from an outdated database from 2007,” says the company in a press release. “The information from the outdated database that may have been stolen includes approximately 12,700 non-U.S. credit or debit card numbers and expiration dates (but not credit card security codes), and about 10,700 direct debit records of certain customers in Austria, Germany, Netherlands and Spain.”

So what kind of info have the hackers obtained? It includes:

* name
* address
* e-mail address
* birthdate
* gender
* phone number
* login name
* hashed password.

However, those “unlucky” enough to reside in Austria, Germany, Netherlands and Spain, the 10,700 direct debit records also detail:

* bank account number
* customer name
* account name
* customer address.

SOE says it plans to give affected customers 30 days of free additional time on their subscriptions as well as one free additional day for each day the system is down.

Sony said second of May that some of its PlayStation network services will go back online sometime this week, and that it plans to implement a “Welcome Back” program to try and heal the rift caused by allowing hackers to compromise the credit card information of 70-77 million PSN network customers.

[IMPORTANT] New translation site

2010-12-12T17:46:29Z

We have moving our translation on new site called Transifex.net. You can now translate strings for new site from this address: http://www.transifex.net/projects/p/dchublist/resource/dchublistpot/ . Below you can see more details about the status:

[IMPORTANT] Help us to translate the site

2010-10-29T11:13:00Z

It's possible now to translate DCHublist.com site in your own language. You can do it using Launchpad.net translation system located at this address: https://translations.launchpad.net/dchublist.com/trunk.
Remember that you must register to Launchpad Service before staring to translate. Thank you for your support

[IMPORTANT] ADC hubsoft

2010-09-10T16:00:00Z

Do you want to run ADC hub? Check all available software from ADC Hubsoft page

UK Pirate Partyâ€™s Guide to the Digital Economy Act

2010-08-29T16:10:30Z

A lot has been written about the UKâ€™s controversial Digital Economy Act, which passed in April in the last days of Gordon Brownâ€™s government. What there has been a lack of, however, is facts and guides about the Act, an omission which the UK Pirate Party has attempted to solve.

When the Digital Economy Bill was going through stages, it was rushed through the House of Commons â€“ the elected half of the UKâ€™s Parliament â€“ in a period known as washup, with the only debate session being poorly attended and full of completely inaccurate pro-Bill statements.

It eventually passed with most MPâ€™s not voting, despite a 3-line whip on the topic for the then-ruling Labour Party MPs.

The Bill passed to become the Digital Economy Act with a narrower margin than many expected given the voting instructions from the party â€“ some had stood up for their conscience and for the facts, risking sanctions from their party.

The Act has been broken down by the Pirate Party into five sections:

1. Introduction and the Initial Obligations Code
2. Technical measures to limit Internet access
3. Subscriber appeals
4. Web-blocking
5. Other Provisions and Summary

This sort of technical guide would have been even better if made available before the vote. Passed around the Commons bar, it could have helped people who were clearly uncertain of technology or the Billâ€™s actual contents to make better sense of it.

For the regular everyday citizens who are now subject to this law, itâ€™s also beneficial. A major problem with recent legislation worldwide is that itâ€™s often impenetrable to anyone without legal training. The ability to access laws and understand them is key to those working with, and striving to improve them.

Meanwhile the Act is still not completed and final. Several UK Government departments, including OFCOM, have been delegated powers and abilities under the Act. There have been consultations (and there may be more) to address parts, and the outcomes of those will make a difference. Many people though, are probably expecting the worst.

On this topic, governments around the world have been increasingly disinterested in listening to the concerns of the citizens affected by the Act, while making policy based on the wishes of a few dozen large companies, and their anecdotal â€˜evidenceâ€˜.

Of course, those that the Act was created to target will probably be the only ones not troubled by it, and that also says volumes about the quality of the law, and the futility of such laws worldwide. Not that such facts will stop things.

Pirate Bay Typo Squatter Trying To Seize Site Trademark

2010-08-20T18:04:28Z

This Wednesday a security blog reported that several rogue sites are in operation which aim to pull in people who were aiming to reach The Pirate Bay, but accidentally entered the URL with typos. While this kind of activity is nothing new, there is a more interesting detail being overlooked. One of the companies behind the scheme is trying to register the Pirate Bay trademark in the United States.

For as long as illicit file-sharing has been around there have been entrepreneurs targeting those out for a free lunch â€“ or a free movie or song. Since many thousands of people new to the downloading game are aware that what they are doing could land them in a little hot water, these individuals are perfect targets for scammers.

Rogue file-sharing sites have been flourishing for years and keeping up with them all is an impossible task. What most of them have in common though is that generally users donâ€™t get what they expected from their visit. In some cases they do get what they want but end up paying, often quite high prices too through shady small print or confusing terms and conditions.

These days more often than not they get what they were looking for but also get something unexpected on top â€“ such as some nasty malware.

Since victims are visiting the file-sharing equivalent of a clip joint, in many cases they find themselves with no legal recourse, meaning these sites run and run.

There are probably a dozen methods of pulling people into these sites, but the main technique is to utilize established file-sharing brands and themes. There are hundreds of scammy sites with â€˜MP3 downloadâ€™ in the title and countless others which play on the LimeWire, BitTorrent and eDonkey/eMule brands.

Yesterday the Sunbelt Blog reported on a scam, actually several different scams, which in part target two very well known brands, eMule and The Pirate Bay. The method of drawing people in relies on them typing in The Pirate Bayâ€™s domain name incorrectly. A small typo here or there takes the victim to a fake domain which results in them downloading a piece of malware. All pretty standard stuff for file-sharing scammers.

However, while researching the companies and individuals behind the dozen or so domains, one particular name stood out. Several of the domains are registered to a company called Pioneer Enterprises and many have their true owners obscured by a privacy service. But a few, and indeed others not listed by Sunbelt, are registered to one Craig Pratka of Yaphank, New York.

Pratka appears to be behind a company called BladeBook, LLC which is the registrant of dozens of other domains. Nothing particularly unusual about that except that BladeBook seem to be branching out into a new area â€“ trademarks.

June 30th 2009 was a pretty exciting day. Swedenâ€™s Global Gaming Factory shocked the world by announcing that it would buy The Pirate Bay for $7.8 million in the hope that it could turn the site into a cash cow.

This event didnâ€™t go unnoticed by BladeBook, LLC. According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Pratka filed a U.S. federal trademark registration for PirateBay (Serial 77770964) on that same day, later going on to file registration for PiratesBay for good measure.

While both of those applications have now expired with the statement â€œAbandonedâ€ others are in the pipeline.

On Thursday May 6th 2010, BladeBook filed trademark registrations for Pirate Bay (Serial 85032017) and Pirates Bay (Serial 85032022). The description given by BladeBook for â€˜theirâ€™ business is as follows;

Provision of telecommunications access and links to computer databases, computer networks and the Internet, namely, providing users online access via a website to third party websites featuring downloadable audio-visual media content in the nature of full-length, partial-length, and clips from motion pictures, television programming, sports events, videos, music videos, music, and interactive games. FIRST USE: 20020611. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20070111

Last year Sweden-based Englishman and alcohol entrepreneur Colin Scragg registered The Pirate Bay (Serial 77787908) so that he could put the siteâ€™s famous logo on bottles of rum. That registration is now listed as â€œopposition pendingâ€.

At the time of publication, Craig Pratka has not responded to our requests for comment.

RIAA â€˜Protectsâ€™ Radioheadâ€™s In Rainbows

2010-08-02T07:22:31Z

In 2007 Radiohead sent a shockwave through the music industry by allowing fans to download their new â€˜self-releasedâ€™ album â€˜In Rainbowsâ€™ for whatever price they wanted to pay, including nothing. Fast-forward three years and the RIAA and IFPI are sending takedown notices to people who share that album online. What happened?

After sitting out their contact with EMI, Radiohead self-released their latest album â€˜In Rainbowsâ€™ and gave fans the option to download it for the price they felt comfortable paying. Not only was this one of the best promotional campaigns of the last decade, it also brought in serious money.

Radiohead said that the scheme made more money online than all of their other albums combined. The band was obviously proud that they had bypassed the major labels successfully. In the years that followed the band members lobbied for more rights for artists, and less power for the labels.

Last year, Radiohead and several other well known artists formed a lobby group with the aim of ending the extortion-like practices of record labels and allowing artists to gain more control over their own work. The artists were unhappy with the fact that the labels, represented by lobby groups such as the RIAA and IFPI, push their anti-piracy agenda without consulting the artists they claim to represent.

Going after fans is not the solution to the problems the industry is facing, they argued.

Considering the above, it came as a surprise to us when we found out that the RIAA and IFPI are still taking anti-piracy measures on behalf of Radiohead. Both the RIAA and IFPI have been sending out takedown notices to Google (RIAA, IFPI), urging it to disable blogger accounts and filter search results where Radioheadâ€™s â€˜In Rainbowsâ€™ is offered for free. What went wrong here?

Although some people think that the â€˜In Rainbowsâ€™ album is still available for free, the free offer really only lasted a few months. After that, the revolutionary â€˜pay-what-you-wantâ€™ model was traded in for traditional licensing schemes with major labels.

In Rainbows was once â€˜freeâ€™

The download versions of the album are still self-released, but for the physical copies Radiohead teamed up with record labels such as Warner and Sony. Because of these deals, major record labels now have the â€˜rightsâ€™ to a piece of â€˜In Rainbowsâ€™ and they are using this power to take down copies that are distributed online without their authorization.

It is of course ironic that an album that was once seen as the next step towards a new business model in the music industry, is now heavily protected by industry anti-piracy bodies. On the other hand, it is doubtful if the takedown requests are actually legitimate because the labels have the rights to physical distribution, not digital.

TorrentFreak contacted a Radiohead representative to discuss RIAA and IFPI practices but they declined to comment. Still, with all the sensible comments the bandâ€™s members have made about sharing in the past, we assume that they donâ€™t approve of the tactics employed by the RIAA and IFPI. Or do they?

Police Keep Their Word, Shut Down File-Sharing Sites

2010-08-01T09:50:39Z

Following high level talks with the IFPI and very public declarations on national TV, it recently became clear that Bulgarian authorities would start taking down torrent sites and other file-sharing services. This week the Ministry of Affairs has been busy targeting what it describes as a â€œcriminal networkâ€ of file-hosting services which allegedly generated more than $3 million.

In late April a memorandum was signed by Bulgariaâ€™s Interior Ministry and the IFPI which effectively declared war on music piracy in the country.

Within days of this announcement Yavor Kolev, the head of Bulgariaâ€™s Computer Crimes Department, stated on national TV that he would begin taking tough action against BitTorrent sites and other file-sharing locations, especially those that profit from their activities.

â€œWe will shut down Zamunda and Arena BG and their servers that supply pirated movies and music and take money from their users via premium SMS,â€ Kolev told the media. However, neither site takes money from BitTorrent users in this way, instead generating income from advertising. This week it became clear that other sites would be targeted first.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it has just carried out â€œthe largest ever operation against Internet piracy in Bulgariaâ€.

Four file-sharing sites were targeted â€“ nanoset.net (which advertised new releases via Twitter), rapidadd.com, 4storing.com and afasta.com. They are accused of distributing music, movies, books and software without the permission of copyright holders and as of today, all four remain down.

After several months of investigations, on a judgeâ€™s authorization and under the supervision of the Deputy District Prosecutor, on Thursday authorities moved against the sites. It is being claimed that they were being operated by â€œan organized crime groupâ€ which employed â€œsophisticated mechanisms for concealing the location of their serversâ€.

Nevertheless, as can be seen from the photos below and the video here, servers -18 in all containing a claimed 120TB â€“ were found. Computer equipment and documents were also seized from the office of a 37 year-old man who is claimed to be the organizer behind the â€œcriminal activityâ€. He was arrested.

Seized Hardware

More Seized Hardware

The Ministry goes on to state the operators of the websites had been profiting from the distribution of copyright content to the tune of $3.34 million by charging users to access material via premium SMS services. One TorrentFreak reader familiar with the situation noted that SMS providers in Bulgaria can take as much as 40-50% of each SMS payment, so the amount allegedly generated should be treated with caution.

While the four busted sites did accept SMS payments, as with many one click hosters, premium accounts with greater features were available for a price. The sites also gave users the ability to use their facilities for free.

Although the head of Bulgariaâ€™s Computer Crimes Department had threatened action against Zamunda and Arena BG â€œand their servers that supply pirated movies and music and take money from their users via premium SMSâ€, both torrent sites remain operational today. However, research on the backgrounds of two of the raided sites, 4Storing and Afasta, appears to show some earlier links to ArenaBG although the exact nature of these connections remain unclear.

uTorrent Web Now Available on iPad and Android

2010-07-30T11:47:22Z

After adding support for the iPhone last month, BitTorrent Inc. has now made the remote access â€˜Webâ€™ feature of its uTorrent Falcon client compatible with the iPad and Android devices. uTorrent users can now remotely control their downloads from wherever they are on their favorite mobile device.

This year BitTorrent Inc. has been very active with the development of uTorrent. The company pushed out two experimental clients, codenamed Falcon and Griffin, which are bundled in the latest uTorrent 3.0 alpha release.

Both projects add several new features to uTorrent. The Griffin branch of uTorrent adds Apps for uTorrent support, allowing users to easily install extensions and add custom features. The Falcon project enables users to stream torrent video files and access their client remotely through a secure web-interface.

With uTorrent â€˜Webâ€™, users can access torrents running on their PC from anywhere in the world, on any computer they have access to. Torrents can be added, paused and removed using an interface with a look and feel identical to that of the uTorrent application.

Initially, uTorrent â€˜Webâ€™ was only available on standard PC browsers, but last month iPhone support was added. Now, after many requests from uTorrent users, the remote control feature is now compatible with the iPad and Android devices.

â€œSince launching ÂµTorrent Web for iPhone, users have been clamoring for something similar on other devices,â€ BitTorrentâ€™s VP of Product Management Simon Morris announced. â€œSo, today we are very excited to announce support for the iPad and Android platform â€“ including the Nexus One and Google Ion devices. Now you can control torrents via your web browser on a PC, iPhone, iPad and Android.â€

The response from users of the remote control feature has been quite positive thus far, but thereâ€™s also a group of people who are reluctant to try the service because of privacy concerns. The â€˜agreementâ€™ between the MPAA and BitTorrent Inc. is still not forgotten by everyone, even though that only applied to BitTorrent Incâ€™s now defunct search engine. Morris, however, ensures that usersâ€™ privacy is in good hands with BitTorrent Inc.

â€œJust like with ÂµTorrent Web for iPhone, we continue to take usersâ€™ privacy very seriously â€“ all your private data is encrypted from the moment it leaves your browser right to the client on the other end. So, as before, users can rest assured that the private details of their ÂµTorrent usage are never exposed to BitTorrent Inc. or any third parties,â€ he says.

In order to use the web interface, users will first have to download and install the latest Falcon release or uTorrent 3.0 alpha. In the client users can set a username and password that they can use to access their torrents remotely. After an encryption swipe and logging in, users will see the mobile compatible interface that gives them all the controls they are familiar with in their regular PC client.

Peter Sunde Banned From Operating The Pirate Bay

2010-07-27T20:42:18Z

Earlier this year The Pirate Bayâ€™s co-founders Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij were banned from operating the site by a Swedish court. Today, The Pirate Bayâ€™s former spokesperson Peter Sunde was added to this list, and now faces a fine of nearly $70,000 if he does not comply with the decision.

Directly or indirectly, The Pirate Bay and its â€˜foundersâ€™ have been involved in a dozen court cases in the past years, most notably the trial in which four people associated with the site were sentenced to one year in jail and hefty fines.

Despite this unfavorable verdict, which will be appealed later this year, the site itself remains online aside from some incidental hosting issues. To change this course, Hollywood movie studios have been going after the alleged operators of the site in court, and not without success.

In May this year, the Swedish Court of Appeals confirmed an earlier judgement by the District Court, prohibiting two of the siteâ€™s founding members â€“ Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij â€“ from operating the site. Failure to comply with the courtâ€™s decision will result in fines of 500,000 kronor (~$70,000) each.

Today, The Pirate Bayâ€™s former spokesperson Peter Sunde was added to this list by the District Stockholm Court and now faces the same fine as his former colleagues for non-compliance.

It is doubtful that this latest decision will have any impact on The Pirate Bayâ€™s operation. Similar to Fredrik and Gottfrid, Peter has previously stated that he is no longer involved with the site. Even more so, in the past Peter only acted as a spokesperson, he was never in charge of technical operations.

Peter Sunde confirmed this stance to TorrentFreak today, and noted that he was surprised by the ruling of the District Court.

â€œThe interesting thing with the ruling is that the Swedish Court feels that they can judge me even though I do not live in Sweden and neither is the system [TPB],â€ Sunde said.

Indeed, all of the three people who are now banned from operating the site no longer live in Sweden. This also complicates the enforcement of the rulings since it is pretty much impossible to check whether or not Peter, Fredrik and Gottfrid are complying with their demands.

Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak that he will appeal the decision of the District Court. However, this appeal will be most likely scheduled after the appeal of The Pirate Bay trial this autumn so it may already be irrelevant by then.

â€œIâ€™ve already appealed the decision, so it will have no effect anyhow. The new court case [appeal of The Pirate Bay trial] is coming up even before this will be in appealâ€¦â€ Sunde said. Until then, Sunde continues to work full-time on his social payment startup Flattr.

Meanwhile, The Pirate Bay is serving torrents to millions of people every day.

UFC Subpoenas Streaming Sites To Track Down Uploader

2010-07-26T15:25:17Z

Following threats in recent months that it would begin targeting those who obtain or deliver their content without permission, the Ultimate Fighting Championship has announced they are targeting two popular streaming hangouts. UFC have subpoenaed Justin.tv and Ustream.tv to force them to reveal the identity of a single user who uploaded two UFC events earlier this year.

Since the start of this year, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) have been warning that they are prepared for a very tough fight indeed â€“ and one in which they hope to knockout Internet piracy of their PPV events.

After shutting down Rage-Streams.net earlier this year, the UFC implied they would start going after those that consume streams too, an unlikely scenario and one that has failed to bear fruit thus far. But there are still plenty of providers â€“ uploaders â€“ and on them, UFC President Dana White made his position clear.

â€œWe are committed to standing toe-to-toe with anyone trying to illegally broadcast or stream UFC events,â€ said the UFC mouthpiece earlier this month when noting that the company had reached 500 settlements with infringers in 2 years.

Earlier, UFC general legal counsel Lawrence Epstein warned that the mixed-martial arts outfit might even subpoena sites in order to gain the IP-addresses of people who were illegally uploading UFC events. The company has now made good on its threats.

UFC parent company Zuffa, which claims to be the largest provider of Pay-Per-View content in the world, just announced that it has subpoenaed two hugely popular streaming video sites, Justin.tv and Ustream.tv. With this legal action they hope to force the companies to reveal the identity of a user who uploaded two UFC events earlier this year.

The UFC say that on January 2, 2010, more than 36,000 people watched an illegal streaming video feed of UFC 108 which was being uploaded from a single IP address. On February 21, 2010, the very same IP address uploaded UFC 110 which was viewed by a claimed 78,000 individuals.

â€œI canâ€™t wait to go after the thieves that are stealing our content,â€ said White. â€œThis is a fight we will not lose.â€

Zuffa say that once Justin.tv and Ustream.tv hand over the identity of the uploader, they will take civil copyright action against them.

MMA fans gave the news a mixed reception, with some noting that being a fan isnâ€™t a right and â€˜stealingâ€™ events is simply wrong. Others felt that accepting a level of piracy is a good way to get more exposure.

â€œThe UFC has had 15 pay-per-view event in the past year. Zuffa LLC is making a killing on PPVs and frustrating fans who simply cannot afford them. Hence, the piracy problem,â€ wrote a contributor to MMA blog, MMAJunkie.

â€œMMA is approaching a saturation point and wonâ€™t be able reach the next plateau of popularity until live UFC shows are easily accessible to the average viewer. You canâ€™t fight the Internet â€“ even if you are in the right. The UFC needs to adapt and evolve in the way it delivers content to the consumer and take a short-term loss for a long-term gain.â€

In 2009, the UFC banked $350 million in PPV revenue.

Admins Of Oldest BitTorrent Site Face Criminal Charges

2010-07-22T07:18:56Z

Two administrators of Filesoup â€“ the longest standing BitTorrent community â€“ have been charged with conspiracy to infringe copyright for their involvement with the site. The case is the second against UK-based BitTorrent site operators. The first case was brought against the owner of the OiNK BitTorrent tracker, who was later cleared of all charges.

Founded in 2003, UK-based FileSoup was one of the original torrent sites. It outlived many of the sites that sprung up around the time and developed a great reputation and a warm community in the years that followed.

After years of operating the site without any noticeable trouble, in the summer of 2009 police and the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) conducted a raid on the home address of the siteâ€™s owner, known online as â€˜TheGeekerâ€™. Another raid was carried out around the same time on the property of fellow administrator â€˜Snookeredâ€™. Both were arrested and taken in for questioning.

From the information that we received after the raids it became clear that the MPAA-funded anti-piracy group FACT had been the driving force behind the case, and that they were responsible for gathering the intelligence that led up to the arrests.

Similar to other cases in the UK, such as that against TV Links, it was not the police but the private anti-piracy group FACT who took charge of property seized from the Filesoup operators. As it turned out, the police themselves knew very little about the suspects and their alleged crimes.

This became clear when Geeker was questioned by the police after his arrest last year. In common with other FACT-run cases, the nature of BitTorrent proved difficult for law enforcement to grasp, with Geeker having to explain how everything worked â€“ including what URLs and domain names are.

Now, nearly a year later, Geeker and a fellow administrator Snookered have been charged with conspiracy to infringe copyright for their role in the site. Notably, Filesoup is mainly a discussion board and although torrent files are linked on the site, it hasnâ€™t operated a tracker for half a decade.

The full text as it appears on the charge sheet is as follows:

Between the 1.1.2003 and 1.9.2009 Stephan [â€¦} and George [â€¦} conspired together with others unknown to infringe copyright in a work communicated to the public in the course of a business namely the website â€˜Filesoupâ€™ knowing or having reason to believe that copyright was infringed.

Conspiracy to Infringe Copyright by Communicating the work to the public Contrary to Section 1 Criminal Law Act 1977

Both admins are currently out on bail but have to surrender to the custody of Taunton Deane Magistrates in Taunton, Somerset, during early August.

Geeker told TorrentFreak that he has been in contact with the same solicitors who successfully defended the admin of the OiNK BitTorrent site, who walked free earlier this year after a UK court cleared him of all charges. He canâ€™t give out any more details on the case at the moment, but has promised to keep us updated as soon as he can.

Although OiNK and Filesoup are both BitTorrent sites, the charges are quite different. Instead of going for â€˜conspiracy to defraudâ€™ as with the case against OiNK admin Allan Ellis, the Filesoup operators are charged with copyright infringement offenses.

It appears that FACT has instructed the authorities to try a different approach this time around since Allan Ellis was not convicted. The most worrying part in this and other cases is that private anti-piracy organizations have so much control of the authorities, up to the point where they can keep seized goods in their possession.

Geeker is confident that he and his fellow admin have a strong case. He believes that, like Alan Ellis, he has never done anything wrong and hopes to convince the court of the same. To be continued.

Charge Sheet (large)

Worldâ€™s First Pirate ISP Launches In Sweden

2010-07-21T10:19:28Z

The Swedish Pirate Party, who are at the forefront of anti-copyright lobbying in Sweden, are planning to shake up the countryâ€™s ISP market. After taking over the supply of bandwidth to The Pirate Bay, Piratpartiet will now partner in the launch of Pirate ISP, a new broadband service that will offer anonymity to customers and provide financial support to the Party.

To defend the rights of BitTorrent users worldwide, the Swedish Pirate Party volunteered to provide bandwidth to The Pirate Bay after previous hosts got into legal trouble in May. At the beginning of July, the Pirate Party surprised again. Not only would they be The Pirate Bayâ€™s new host, but they would use Parliamentary immunity to run the site from inside the Swedish Parliament.

Now the Party have made another interesting announcement. Together with technology partners, they will enter the broadband market with Pirate ISP, a new service designed to deliver consumer Internet in line with the Pirate Partyâ€™s ideals.

Gustav Nipe, student of economics, long-standing Pirate Party member and CEO of Pirate ISP told TorrentFreak that Pirate ISP is based on the hacker ontology. â€œIf you see something and you think itâ€™s broken you build a patch and fix it. With that as a reference point we are launching an ISP. This is one way to tackle the big brother society.â€

â€œThe Pirate ISP is needed in different ways. One is to compete with other ISPs, let them fight more for our internet. If they donâ€™t behave there will always be someone else taking their share,â€ Nipe added.

Aside from the competition angle, Gustav Nipe told TorrentFreak that the Pirate ISP will maximize privacy for all its customers. Operated by ViaEuropa â€“ the company behind the iPredator anonymity service â€“ Pirate ISP users will remain anonymous.

The service began beta testing in the city of Lund yesterday with around 100 residents of LKF, a housing organization whose aim is to provide quality accommodations at a reasonable cost.

After the first two weeks of testing, the initial expansion aim is to take 5% of the market in Lund and then set up in further locations around Sweden. This is a reasonable aim according to Nipe, who told TorrentFreak that they start small so they can assure quality service to all their customers.

At the Hacknight conference in MalmÃ¶, Nipe told Shane Murray from nrli.tv that they will not allow the Swedish Government to monitor Pirate ISP users and will refuse to retain logs. He warned that any attempt to force it to do otherwise will result in a constitutional issue.

Nipe was also clear on how Pirate ISP would respond to outside interference, in particular that from the United States.

â€œThey can bring on whatever they have, we will refuse to follow there. We donâ€™t agree with what they are saying and we donâ€™t agree with the laws they are making so if they have an issue with us, then we will have an issue â€“ but thatâ€™s it.â€

For most potential Pirate ISP customers who intend to use the service to file-share, the immediate threats will come from closer to home, primarily from Henrik PontÃ©n at Svenska AntipiratbyrÃ¥n, the Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau. Nipe said they are prepared to deal with this challenge.

â€œIt would be a pity to reveal all the tricks that we have, so we will save those for later. But we have ways to ensure that no customer should have to get a sad letter home from Henrik PontÃ©n.â€

For his part, yesterday PontÃ©n seemed unimpressed.

â€œOur investigations have focused on people with much higher safety. The question has been asked a thousand times before,â€ he said. â€œWhen the police come calling, they must disclose the information.â€

It seems that the wider Swedish public wonâ€™t have long to wait to discover if Pirate ISP can live up to its promises. According to Nipe they will roll out big in Sweden at the end of this summer.

Anti-Piracy Group Stuns The World With Torrent Site Massacre

2010-07-15T14:59:52Z

An anti-piracy group has revealed that when it comes to shutting down torrent sites, it is the undisputed king of the Internet. BREIN, which works on behalf of the Hollywood movie studios, says that not only has it shut down several Usenet indexers and streaming sites already in 2010, but hundreds of torrent sites too. There is torrent site carnage going on in The Netherlands and weâ€™ve failed to report on any of it.

When it comes to reporting on BitTorrent-related news and issues, we try our very best to cover every angle here at TorrentFreak. Admittedly we canâ€™t cover everything and sometimes itâ€™s hard to constantly turn out positive articles which fill our readers with optimism that the Internet isnâ€™t about to taken over by evil corporate entities hell bent on web-wide file-sharing destruction.

Today, however, we have a big apology to make. Weâ€™ve let you all down and weâ€™ve let ourselves down too by completely missing one of the biggest developing stories the BitTorrent world has ever known. Weâ€™ve totally neglected to cover what can only be described as a wholesale slaughter of file-sharing venues in The Netherlands, and for this we wholeheartedly apologize.

Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN, who have previously given Mininova, The Pirate Bay, Demonoid and What.cd a hard time in varying degrees, have been busy. And when we say busy, we arenâ€™t messing around. During the last few months itâ€™s up for debate whether the groupâ€™s staff have had time to sleep. If theyâ€™ve even stopped to eat it would be, frankly, somewhat of a surprise.

According to BREIN, which works mainly on behalf of the Hollywood studios but has branched out to work for other rightsholders in recent times, during the first half of 2010 it shut down a staggering 422 â€œillegal websitesâ€.

While the whole world was focused on the U.S. Government taking down less than 10 sites this year but making a huge song and dance about it, BREIN was quietly showing them how itâ€™s really done.

In addition to 5 Usenet indexers, 6 streaming sites, an FTP server, and 29 sites linking to material on one-click hosters, this most prolific and apparently effective of anti-piracy groups took down 384 torrent sites in the last 6 months. Thatâ€™s more than 2 torrent sites culled every day this year and weâ€™ve failed to report on just about every one of them.

In an attempt to fill this gap, TorrentFreak contacted BREIN boss Tim Kuik for information but we didnâ€™t do very well at all. We were told that they arenâ€™t releasing the URLs of the sites since they only detail those that they take to court and naming them would only give them increased traction and popularity.

We also tried to find out their names through our own network but yet again we failed miserably. For this we apologize. A bloodbath going on under our noses, in our own community, we didnâ€™t even notice and we still canâ€™t give you details since it appears all the corpses have been buried in unmarked graves surrounded by a wall of silence.

The worst part is that this failing on our part is nothing new. All the signs were there a few months ago that BREIN was capable of carrying out yet another massacre in 2010, just as they did last year.

In 2009, BREIN said it shut down 35 eD2K servers, 38 streaming video sites and 14 Usenet portals/NZB sites. It also took responsibility for the destruction of an unprecedented 393 BitTorrent sites. We didnâ€™t notice, but strangely neither did anyone else.

So what were we able to find out about the closures?

â€œThe take down most often takes place through the hosting provider,â€ Kuik told TorrentFreak. â€œWe also obtain identity details from the hosting providers but these sites tend to register under a false name. If the site changes to another hosting provider, we will contact that provider. In case all else fails we will go for blocking of the site by access providers. Currently there is court case pending about that.â€

If BREIN is allowed to continue this rampage there wonâ€™t be any torrent sites left by 2012 and weâ€™ll be left with literally nothing to report on. TorrentFreak will die, but really we only have ourselves to blame. Nearly 800 torrent sites gone already and not a whisper from us? A shameful performance. Weâ€™ll try to improve, for all our sakes.

The Pirate Bay Hacked, Users Exposed

2010-07-09T10:06:25Z

A group of Argentinian hackers have managed to gain access to The Pirate Bayâ€™s admin panel through a security breach. Via the backend of The Pirate Bay website they were able to delete torrents and expose usersâ€™ IP-addresses, emails and MD5-hashed passwords. The Pirate Bay is currently working on a fix while the site is offline.

In the past TorrentFreak has covered several weaknesses in websites belonging to anti-piracy websites such as the RIAA. However, a recent posting by the Argentinian hacker Ch RussÃ³ shows that The Pirate Bay is not invulnerable to such exploits either.

RussÃ³, who claims to be researcher born in Buenos Aires, has published a video that shows how he got into the Pirate Bay admin panel. Here, the hacker could manage all torrents in the siteâ€™s database with full admin access. In addition, RussÃ³ shows that he had access to sensitive user information such as IP-addresses and emails.

TorrentFreak has contacted a Pirate Bay insider who informed us that that several people are currently looking into the issue while the site is offline for upgrades. The downtime is not related to the hack, but it will be used to solve the vulnerabilities. â€œWe decided to rewrite all database-handling anyway, since it was 6 years old,â€ we were told.

According to our source at The Pirate Bay, who didnâ€™t want to give out too many details at the moment, the hackers were only able to execute the SQL injections after they gained access to the admin panel.

RussÃ³ claims that he has no bad intentions and that he merely wants to inform the public that their information is not as secure as they like it to be. A humble goal, wrongly executed. In the process he exposes several email addresses and other privacy sensitive information that is clearly visible in the video.

Although the information obtained by RussÃ³ might be worth a few bucks to some interested anti-piracy outfits, he has no plans to sell any of the information to any third parties.

â€œProbably these groups would be very interested in this information, but we are not [trying] to sell it,â€ RussÃ³ told KrebsOnSecurity. â€œInstead we wanted to tell people that their information may not be so well protected.â€

The Pirate Bay folks on the other hand are confident that the problem will be fixed during the current downtime period. They further assured us that it was impossible for the hackers to find out the true passwords of the siteâ€™s users.

Update: The Pirate Bay is backâ€¦

Pirate Bay and MegaUpload Escape Domain Seizure by US

2010-07-08T12:38:55Z

As part of an initiative to crack down on Internet piracy and counterfeiting, the US Government recently took action against sites making available movies and TV shows. Arrests did not feature in the action, but controversially the authorities seized site domain names instead. TorrentFreak has learned that both The Pirate Bay and MegaUpload domains were also on the target list.

In the final days of last month, US authorities targeted several sites they claimed were connected to the streaming of movies and TV shows. â€˜Operation In Our Sitesâ€˜ culminated in the apparent shutting down of 9 sites â€“ TVShack.net, Movies-Links.TV, FilesPump.com, Now-Movies.com, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org, ZML.com, NinjaVideo.net and NinjaThis.net â€“ although not in the conventional manner.

Rather than rounding the operators up physically or threatening them with ruinous legal action, the US Government seized at least 7 of the domains instead, and pointed them to their own server which carried an ominous warning...

The action came following recent threats from Vice President Joe Biden and Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel which were directed at those offering unauthorized movies and music. Nevertheless, the domain seizure route came as quite a surprise.

That said, domain seizures are nothing new. In 2008 the Governor of Kentucky grabbed around 140 domains connected with online gambling but we have to go back seven years to find a comparable copyright related case.

In February 2003, the US DOJ obtained the domain of release news site IsoNews.com after its owner pleaded guilty to selling Xbox â€˜Enigmahâ€™ mod chips, a violation of the DMCA. However, the siteâ€™s domain wasnâ€™t taken â€˜just like thatâ€™, it was handed over by its owner in a plea deal. So, how did the authorities manage to take control of the streaming-connected sites so easily? The answer lies with ICANN.

Amongst other things, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the body responsible for managing the webâ€™s DNS system to ensure that users of the Internet can find websites by using domain names. Coincidentally, last month Internet policy and security research group KnujOn published a report which suggested that many dozens of Internet domain registrars (who sell domains to the public) could be violating their agreements with ICANN, including but not limited to the blocking of Whois information.

The report, which concerned domains through which unlicensed pharmaceuticals are sold online, was later cited by John Horton, the head of a LegitScript, a company which aims to ensure the legitimacy of online pharmacies. He noted the importance of pointing out to domain name registrars that â€œthere is no reason to knowingly facilitate criminal activity including activity that violates intellectual property. Those are the choke points of the Internet.â€

Of course, one such choke point is located a small but significant step above the registrars with ICANN itself and it seems the organization has been working both closely and freely with the authorities in respect of these recent domain seizures.

A source that has proved 100% reliable in the past told TorrentFreak that ICANN transferred the movie and TV related domains to the US authorities because it was agreed that they were violating their terms and conditions. We were also informed that, as mentioned in the KnujOn report, some registrars also violate ICANNâ€™s terms and conditions by anonymizing the ownership of domains. This, we were told, could make other domains in a similar state targets to be seized by the authorities in the future.

So the basic formula appears to be this â€“ the US Government felt the sites in question were illegal and since they were accessible from the US, they should do something about them. On its part, ICANN has no problem cooperating with the Government and is happy to act on terms of use violations either by domain owners or domain registrars.

Clearly this development comes as somewhat of a surprise, so naturally we were keen to find out where this policy could end. How, for example, would it affect some of the biggest sites? Naturally The Pirate Bay came to mind.

Shockingly, TorrentFreak was informed that wheels were also set in motion to seize The Pirate Bay domain. But for reasons that remain unclear that didnâ€™t come to pass. Our source believes that the US authorities wouldâ€™ve had to contact the Swedish authorities on the matter first, but that since there is already an unfinished criminal process against the site, the time was not considered right. There is an implication, however, that patience wonâ€™t last forever and may run out after the foundersâ€™ upcoming court appeal.

Another site in the cross hairs appears to be MegaUpload. Although a domain seizure was suggested, it now seems that another route has been taken, at least for now. We have also been informed by other sources that further sites are being watched although it proved impossible to discover their names.

We asked ICANN for a reaction on this development, but got no reply.

â€œHollywood lawyers have discovered the soft underbelly of piracy,â€ was the reaction of Professor Pouwelse from Delft University of Technology. Prof. Pouwelse is no stranger to legal proceedings, he has appeared as an expert witness on P2P matters in numerous civil and criminal court proceedings.

â€œThis is very effective erosion of Internet rights, if it grows from an obscure practice into standard procedure for taking down entire websitesâ€. The Kentucky example is dragging on for years already, so there is still hope.

Clearly the seizure of domains on terms and conditions violations is a worrying development but one that could remain unresolved for sometime. Are the operators of the above-mentioned streaming sites likely to turn up in a US court to argue for their safe return? Hardly.

IsoHunt Partners US Attorney General to Ban Child Porn

2010-07-01T10:14:48Z

BitTorrent search engine isoHunt is the first foreign website to partner with New York Attorney General Cuomo in an effort to keep the Internet clean from child pornography. By using the Attorney Generalâ€™s hash value database to filter its search results, isoHunt will prevent thousands of images from spreading on BitTorrent.

To combat the distribution of child pornography on the Internet, New York Attorney General Cuomo has started a hash value database. Site owners can use the database to voluntarily prevent thousands of illegal files from being shared via links posted from their websites.

The database is in use by many large social networking sites such as Facebook, Friendster and MySpace and the Attorney General is continuously looking for new partners to join. One of the latest websites to be approached by the Attorney Generalâ€™s office is the BitTorrent site isoHunt, whose owner immediately said yes to the invitation.

â€œUsers of isoHunt have often notified us of illegal child content in the past. We are pleased to expand this effort in working with Attorney General Cuomo in a collaborative database in stopping such appalling files from being spread on BitTorrent,â€ commented isoHunt owner Gary Fung on the collaboration.

Canada-based IsoHunt is not only the first BitTorrent site to join the program, it is also the first website outside the United States to cooperate with the initiative. This decision was praised by Attorney General Cuomo.

â€œThe profound impact of this groundbreaking initiative will reverberate not only in New York, but across the country and around the world,â€ said Cuomo as he welcomed isoHunt to the program. â€œThis is all about protecting kids, and the same way child pornographers use technology to distribute these disturbing images, we are using technology to shut off their digital pipeline.â€

IsoHuntâ€™s collaboration with the Attorney General sheds an interesting light on the lawsuit against the MPAA its currently involved with. In this case, a court ordered isoHunt to implement a keyword filter based on film titles provided by the MPAA. IsoHunt appealed this decision, claiming that a keyword filter would result in too much collateral damage and instead suggesting that a filter based on unique and confirmed fingerprints (hashed) would be more effective.

Supporting the Motion For Stay, Gary Fung informed the Ninth Circuit Appeal Court about his new partnership and why that is more effective. â€œâ€¦isoHunt is the only international participant in the Attorney Generalâ€™s program. This program is efficient and workable because the Attorney General provides hashes, names and file sizes of content files (child pornography) in their possession.â€

â€œWith those three pieces of metadata, they can be used to narrow down content files, download, and then do a hash comparison for verification. Thus, using their data on content files, we can make a BitTorrent-compatible info_hash database for automated takedown in association.â€

Instead of a keyword filter, Fung and his legal team suggest that a hash filter will prove more accurate and effective. Thus far, the Court has not asked the MPAA to provide torrent hashes, just keywords.

â€œThe key to the system with the Attorney Generalâ€™s office is access and â€˜knowledgeâ€™ of content files, which Plaintiffs are not providing, have never provided and are not required to provide under the current Permanent Injunction in this case, insofar as identifying Plaintiffsâ€™ content files with reasonable accuracy.â€

â€œIf Plaintiffs would provide the metadata for the content files for which they allegedly have copyrights, we could then perform a hash verification as we are doing with the Attorney Generalâ€™s office,â€ Fung concluded.

It would be interesting to see what the Court does with this new information. Previously, Mininova implemented a similar hash filter for copyright holders but it was ordered to implement a more general keyword filter by a Dutch court nonetheless.

Despite the legal implications, itâ€™s good to see that the New York Attorney General prefers to collaborate with a BitTorrent site instead of trying to take it offline because if could be used for nefarious purposes.

Swedish ISP Blocks The Pirate Bay Following Injunction

2010-06-29T05:36:43Z

Last month one of three injunctions obtained by Hollywood lawyers required that Swedish ISP Black Internet must stop providing access to the worldâ€™s most famous BitTorrent site. The provider has just complied with the court order and in turn became the first in Sweden to cut their customers off from the site. Whether this opens the floodgates for other ISP blocks remains to be seen.

Black Internetâ€™s relationship with The Pirate Bay has been far from smooth. Last year, the Swedish ISP bravely put its head above the parapet when it became a bandwidth supplier to the site, a move which has had several knock-on effects.

In August 2009, Stockholmâ€™s district court ordered Black Internet to disconnect The Pirate Bay from the Internet or face fines of 500,000 kronor ($64,527). The ISP quickly complied with the ruling and the site temporarily went dark, but quickly reappeared with a new host.

The very next day following its decision to disconnect The Pirate Bay, Black Internetâ€™s infrastructure was sabotaged with cost implications of â€œmillions of kronorâ€. Although it was never proven, many believed that the attack and the blacking out of the worldâ€™s most famous BitTorrent site were connected.

After initially saying it wouldnâ€™t appeal the district courtâ€™s decision, Black Internet changed its mind. â€œThis is the first time in Sweden that an operator has been ordered to stop delivering Internet to someone. We want to know if itâ€™s correct to do so,â€ said company boss CEO Victor MÃ¶ller. The appeal was granted.

Last month the Svea Court of Appeals made its decision and for Black Internet the outcome was poor.

The Court ordered Black Internet to â€œstop providing Internet access to the TPB web site consisting of a web site including search engine and databasefunctions on which torrent files may be stored and a tracker.â€

Even though the ISP is no longer servicing The Pirate Bay, the scope of this injunction appears to be broader than first thought. Not only must it never host the site, it must also stop the rest of its regular customers from accessing The Pirate Bay, making it the first ISP in Sweden ordered to block the site.

â€œWe have chosen to block traffic into and out of the IP addresses that are using the Pirate Bay,â€ said Black Internetâ€™s Victor MÃ¶ller. â€œWe made a decision on our assessment that this was the only way to live up to the Court of Appealâ€™s decision.â€

Although being precise is difficult, MÃ¶ller estimates that the block affects many thousands of businesses and individuals, many of which are keen to reestablish links with the site.

â€œThey are looking for more tips and advice on getting past this block,â€ notes MÃ¶ller. â€œThere seems to be a great need to reach the Pirate Bay.â€

TorrentFreak is awaiting comments from both Black Internet and Hollywood lawyer Monique Wadsted and will update this article with that information as soon as it arrives.

Update: Court of appeals judge Ulrika Gustavsson StenbÃ¤ck has been speaking with Swedish media and has stated that Black Internetâ€™s interpretation of the injunction has gone too far.

â€œThe decision meant no general duty to supervise over what people do online, or a general duty to stop someone from getting into the Pirate Bay. It is clear in our decision. Our decision relates only to Black Internet not providing internet access [hosting] to The Pirate Bay.â€

It seems at this stage that Black Internet is blocking The Pirate Bay but doesnâ€™t have to.

KTorrent First BitTorrent Client To Adopt Open Source uTP

2010-05-28T21:35:36Z

The KDE BitTorrent client KTorrent has become the first to implement the â€˜improvedâ€™ BitTorrent protocol that was open sourced by BitTorrent Inc. a few days ago. With uTP, KTorrent users should cause less network congestion and interference with other applications. They are also the first to benefit from faster connections to uTorrent users.

In March the uTorrent team released the long-awaited version 2.0 of their popular BitTorrent client which introduced several significant changes.

One of the novelties in the new uTorrent release was uTP, a new and improved implementation of the BitTorrent protocol which is designed to be network friendly. Critics, however, have labeled the new release as unfair, which has resulted in the client being banned from several private BitTorrent trackers.

The critique was aimed at the new uTP protocol which causes uTorrent to favor its own kind when networking. This means that when connecting to other clients, uTorrent users will give preference to other uTorrent users.

Earlier this week BitTorrent Inc., the company behind uTorrent, open sourced the uTP protocol so other developers can make their clients uTorrent compatible. Although not all developers are equally excited about uTP, Ktorrent has already upgraded its client to support uTP with its new 4.0 release.

To our knowledge, KTorrent is the first client outside BitTorrent Inc. to implement uTP support. With uTP, KTorrent will be more network aware as it will throttle itself if congestion is detected in the network. In theory, this should eliminate the need for ISPs to throttle BitTorrent traffic, while KTorrent users should see less interference with other local applications.

Aside from adding uTP support the latest KTorrent release also adds support for magnet links, a feature that was pushed by The Pirate Bay and has now been implemented by all the prominent BitTorrent clients. The full KTorrent changelog can be found at the official website.

Microsoft Fails to Close Major BitTorrent Tracker

2010-05-22T01:07:03Z

Earlier this year software giant Microsoft launched a lawsuit against Lithuaniaâ€™s largest BitTorrent tracker for its role in the unauthorized distribution of Office 2003 and 2007. Microsoft successfully obtained an injunction against the site and the operatorâ€™s assets were seized, but these requests have now been overturned by the appeal court.

Most legal cases related to copyright infringement on BitTorrent are initiated by the movie and music industries. Microsoft has recently joined this group, although they have done so with a relatively low profile in Lithuania.

With approval from their United States headquarters, Microsoft went after the largest BitTorrent site in Lithuania, LinkoManija. Microsoft accused the site and its operator of assisting in the illegal distribution of Office 2003 and 2007 and filed a lawsuit in January.

Hoping to recoup some of the claimed losses, Microsoft demanded $45 million from LinkoManijaâ€™s alleged operator Kestas Ermanas and his company. Microsoft further asked the court to close the tracker and seize the assets of Kestas.

Both requests were granted and the assets of the siteâ€™s operator and his company were seized and associated bank accounts frozen. The site, however, remained online as Kestas and his company said that they were no longer operating LinkoManija. Kestas told TorrentFreak that he handed the operation over to a third party early 2009.

The decisions were immediately appealed by Kestas and his legal team, who have now informed us that the Appeal Court overturned both. According to the ruling the site should not be closed before there is a verdict in the full trial, and Kestas has also regained access to his personal bank accounts.

This is not the only setback for Microsoft in Lithuania. It previously lost its court case against a user of LinkoManija who they claimed had shared Windows 7 Ultimate illegally. The man was on trial in March and walked free due to a lack of evidence.

The main trial against LinkoManijaâ€™s operator and his company is expected to start in the near future although no official date has yet been set.

ISP Must Hand Over Identity Of OpenBitTorrent Operator

2010-05-20T03:50:59Z

An ISP must hand over the identity of the operator behind a major BitTorrent tracker, a court in Sweden ruled today. OpenBitTorrent, probably the worldâ€™s largest public tracker, is currently hosted by Portlane. The ISP must now reveal the identity of its customer to Hollywood movie companies or face a hefty fine.

Yesterday we reported how a Swedish appeals court had upheld an earlier ruling which ordered an ISP to hand over the details of a torrent site operator. If it fails to supply several movie companies with the name of the customer behind the SweTorrents site, ISP TeliaSonera faces a 750,000 kronor ($96,500) fine.

Although TeliaSonera may yet appeal the decision and potentially win, today brings news of a new IPRED case on an altogether bigger scale.

Just as The Pirate Bay has relocated and obfuscated its real location to avoid detection, it has also changed its structure and modus operandi in order to stay alive. A major part of this strategy became apparent last year when it shut down its tracker, instead relying on DHT, PEX and trackers operated by 3rd parties, in particular OpenBitTorrent. Hollywood didnâ€™t take long to react.

Portlane must hand over the identities of those behind OpenBitTorrent

â€œOpenBitTorrent is used for file sharing, and we suspect that it is the Pirate Bay tracker with a new name. It is added by default on all of the torrent tracker files on Pirate Bay,â€ Hollywood lawyer Monique Wadsted said in an earlier comment.

In November last year Hollywood announced they would sue OpenBitTorrent host Portlane in an attempt to force the closure of the tracker.

In December the Stockholm District Court rejected calls to close down the tracker, a decision that is currently under appeal with the studios claiming that Portlane should take responsibility for the infringements being facilitated by OpenBitTorrent.

While that game of legal-tennis continues, the studios have today won another significant battle, this time in a Stockholm court. While there has been speculation about the identities of those behind OpenBitTorrent, that information has been impossible to verify. All that could be about to change.

â€œThe Court orders Portlane under pain of a fine of SEK 500,000 ($63,633) to provide the Studios with the name and e-mail address information [of those behind OBT],â€ said movie industry lawyer Monique Wadsted as she provided TorrentFreak with a translation of a decision announced in the Stockholm City Court today.

The ruling covers the customer behind the IP addresses 188.126.64.2 and 188.126.64.3 and/or any other IP addresses in Portlaneâ€™s entire range (188.126.64.0 â€“ 188.126.95.255) which have been allocated to tracker.openbittorrent.com since August 28, 2009.

The Court also ruled that Portlane should state whether or not the customer is situated inside the EU. The operators of OBT say they first got together in Lima, Peru, although their nationalities and current locations are unknown.

Portlane has 14 days to hand over the information to the studios but may yet still appeal this decision. At the time of publication Portlane has yet to respond with comments.

OpenBitTorrent has never portrayed the â€˜jolly rogerâ€™ style of The Pirate Bay and even has a DMCA-style notice and takedown procedure to stop the tracking of torrents. Even so, it would be surprising if they hadnâ€™t anticipated the possibility of a court ruling like this and taken the necessary steps to hide their identities from Portlane.

uTorrent Idea Bank Taps Into the Wisdom of the Swarm

2010-05-07T21:29:25Z

The uTorrent team has added an idea bank to their website where users can vote for and suggest features that should be implemented in the BitTorrent client. A Linux version of uTorrent and the option to receive an email when a file has finished downloading are currently the most voted for ideas.

uTorrent is one of the most widely used BitTorrent applications. It is the client of choice for more than 50 million users worldwide and this number continues to rise alongside BitTorrentâ€™s increasing popularity.

Over the years, uTorrentâ€™s developers have received thousands of suggestions from users on how the client can be further improved. To streamline this process and to find out what the most wanted features and improvements are, the uTorrent team has launched an Idea Bank.

The Idea Bank is prominently featured on uTorrentâ€™s website and allows users to submit and vote for ideas they want to see implemented. Users can vote for a maximum of 10 ideas, but are free to change their vote if a better suggestion comes along. Once an idea is completed, users will regain the vote they allocated to that suggestion.

With the Idea Bank uTorrent hopes to tap into the wisdom of the crowd (or swarm), which will hopefully lead to an even better product for the end user.

â€œWeâ€™ve actually wanted to do it for a while now and weâ€™ve finally found resources to get it done,â€ Simon Morris, BitTorrentâ€™s VP of Product Management told TorrentFreak. â€œThe point is to have a more structured way for users to contribute feature ideas and then vote on them â€“ it is an attempt to engage the wisdom of crowds more directly.â€

uTorrent Idea Bank

uTorrent has always had a forum section with feature requests, but that was less visible for the average user and the progress of the requests was difficult to track. With the new Idea Bank users can see at a glance what features are being worked on and what has already been implemented.

â€œAlthough the Forums are popular, they tend to select a much more advanced community of enthusiasts. We felt it was important to put something as critical as feature requests closer to the mass of mainstream users,â€ Morris told TorrentFreak.

Those who have a feature suggestion or want to vote on one can go to the Idea Bank and participate. At the time of writing the bank holds 55 ideas, one of these is being worked on and three ideas have been implemented already. A Linux version of uTorrent is the top idea at the moment, followed by an email notification for completed downloads.

â€Child Pornography Is Greatâ€, Anti-Pirates Say

2010-04-29T14:56:00Z

It is no secret that pro-copyright lobbyists are exploiting child pornography to get file-sharing sites pulled offline. They have done so for years. Their ultimate goal is to use child porn as an excuse to impose a global Internet filter, and with a new directive being presented in the EU their strategy seems to be paying off.

In 2007, a year after the Swedish police raided The Pirate Bayâ€™s servers in Stockholm, there was a seminar in the same city titled â€Sweden â€” A Safe Haven for Pirates?â€ There, in a room filled with like-minded souls, Johan SchlÃ¼ter of the Danish Anti-Piracy Group took the stage with the ultimate plan to curb piracy.

â€Child pornography is great,â€ he said enthusiastically. â€It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites.â€

Where one would have expected an averse reaction from the public, cheers started to fill the entire room instead. For years the music and movie industries have tried to convince politicians that piracy was killing their businesses, without much result. Using child porn as an excuse could just be what they needed for an extra push.

â€One day we will have a giant filter that we develop in close cooperation with IFPI and MPA. We continuously monitor the child porn on the net, to show the politicians that filtering works. Child porn is an issue they understand,â€ Johan SchlÃ¼ter told his fellow attendees.

In the months and years that followed, the pro-copyright lobby continued to put pressure on local governments and courts to disarm The Pirate Bay. In Denmark, they had some success in court as a local ISP was ordered to block access to The Pirate Bay.

Increasingly, the child porn argument is used all around the world to get governments to implement state run Internet filters. â€œThe big film and record companies want censorship of the net, and they are perfectly willing to cynically use child porn as an excuse to get it,â€ Pirate Party MEP Christian Engstrom writes in brilliant a blog post discussing the issue.

Engstromâ€™s comments are a response to the plans of Swedish EU commissioner Cecilia MalmstrÃ¶m to build a European Internet filter. As Engstrom also notes, a filter is only going to hide the real problem while the real offenders can easily bypass the restrictions. Wouldnâ€™t it be much better to track down the sources spreading the material and throw them in jail?

Wouldnâ€™t that be great?

The Cleanternet, Our Future?

Attached YouTube Video

RapidShare Targets Sites Over Trademark Abuse

2010-04-25T23:38:23Z

RapidShare has been sending out legal threats to link sites and search engines that use its trademark to encourage users to download copyrighted material. The company is demanding that these sites cease their operations and hand over their domain names to RapidShare, voluntarily or through domain disputes.

A few weeks ago we revealed that Rapidshare was looking forward to collaborating with the entertainment industry, and that it would increasingly terminate the accounts of persistent copyright infringers.

This move is part of a new strategy for the file-hoster, which will also see it go after third party sites who use the RapidShare trademark to â€˜promoteâ€™ or encourage copyright infringement.

â€œWe are extending our efforts to proceed against linking-sites, against so called RapidShare search engines and against individuals who abuse our trademark to distribute copyright protected content,â€ RapidShareâ€™s departing CEO Bobby Chang wrote to the entertainment industry.

Several weeks later it seems that RapidShare is indeed keeping its word. The company has recently sent out requests to a slew of site owners demanding that they stop abusing the RapidShare trademark for nefarious purposes. In addition, RapidShare has filed several domain disputes against similar sites, hoping to scoop their domains.

Among the targets are Rapidshare.net, Rapid.org (formerly Rapidfind) and Rapidshare4movies.com, all sites that allow users to find content available on RapidShare.

In the letters sent by RapidShareâ€™s lawyers, site owners are asked to stop encouraging people to use RapidShare for copyright infringement (i.e. close their sites) and transfer the domain to RapidShare within two weeks. Among other things, the lawyers cite trademark abuse and unfair competition as the reasons why RapidShare is taking these actions.

Whether this strategy is in the best interests of its users has to be doubted. TorrentFreak spoke to several site owners who were targeted by RapidShare and none of them are planning to capitulate.

â€œWe find it amazing, considering the amount of traffic and inevitably premium memberships we drive towards Rapidshare, that they target us in such an aggressive manner and turn on their own customers,â€ the founder of Rapid.org told TorrentFreak.

â€œWe will not comply with ludicrous threats, such as to hand over the domain, and we will continue building our already large community. If at any point it becomes necessary for us to support alternative filehosts and/or create our own, we are capable and willing to do just that,â€ he added.

Aside from legal pressure, the file-hoster has also filed several WIPO domain disputes in the last week against sites that use the word â€˜RapidShareâ€™ in their domain names. If successful, these disputes could shutter many popular sites that were built on the RapidShare brand.

In the legal paperwork RapidShare clearly states that it does not want its site to be used for copyright infringement. By closing the linking sites and search engines they most likely hope to improve their relationship with the entertainment industry and avoid being shut down themselves.

File-Sharers Monitoring The File-Sharing Hunters

2010-04-24T20:30:00Z

New laws such as the Digital Economy Bill in the UK will need to be enforced, and this will be done through anti-piracy tracking companies. The Hadopi legislation in France will be assisted by Trident Media Guard, but already those that are paid to watch over pirates are being watched themselves.

Back in February we reported that Trident Media Guard, the French anti-piracy outfit that was selected by the music and movie industries to assist in enforcing their rights under the new Hadopi legislation, was already being seen in action.

Although their activities with Hadopi will be limited to monitoring and gathering evidence against file-sharers, we saw them trying to smother a lone file-sharer with their P2P-spamming technology, for which they have submitted a patent. The screenshot below shows TMG â€˜DDoSingâ€™ the BitTorrent user in question.

Just as file-sharers make their IP addresses known when they connect to file-sharing networks and other file-sharers, anti-piracy companies do the same. As can be seen from a WHOIS on the range of IP addresses shown above (91.189.104.0 â€“ 91.189.111.255), they belong to TMG.

Now, according to a report over at Numerama, TMG have also been busy setting up fake eDonkey servers (located on IP ranges 85.159.236.252 â€“ 85.159.236.254 and 85.159.232.81 â€“ 85.159.232.83). To avoid connecting to fake servers, users are advised to only use those listed here.

There does, though, appear to be an even greater threat. Fake file-sharing clients running on the IP address range 193.107.240.0 to 193.107.240.22 (again registered to TMG, this time in the UK) are connecting to users and gathering data about the files they are sharing. This is exactly the sort of data that will be used to generate warning letters which could eventually lead to Internet user disconnections.

Through some clever monitoring, Peerates were able to discover some of the files that TMG are monitoring, which include TV shows such as Heroes and music by The Black Eyed Peas.

As the IP addresses used by companies such as TMG get revealed, at some point they will have to change them for new ones. Equally, as new ones are brought into service, those will too be revealed to the public and so the cat and mouse game continues.

While the savvy file-sharer will probably be able to stay ahead of the game to minimize their chances of being monitored, the casual file-sharer may not be so lucky. But after a warning or two, rest assured, they too will change their ways. Whether that will be by using a VPN or heading back to the media stores will remain to be seen.

Anti-Piracy Outfit Chases Torrent Site Domain Registrar

2010-04-24T04:47:00Z

After targeting companies that dare to provide hosting services to torrent sites, Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN has now started to apply pressure to a domain registrar. The tactic seems to work as at least one site, Torrentbit.nl, has decided to change its domain name to prevent being shut down.

Torrentbit is a medium-sized torrent site with about 100,000 daily visitors. Like many other torrent sites hosted in The Netherlands, Torrentbit has found itself in the crosshairs of BREIN. In February the anti-piracy outfit sent a request to its host NFOrce, demanding that the company take the site offline.

NFOrce communicated this request to the owner of the site, who had no other option than to move his site to a hosting provider outside The Netherlands. The alternative â€“ facing legal battle against BREIN in court â€“ was not a viable option for the siteâ€™s operator.

Soon after BREINâ€™s request, Torrentbit moved to a Swedish hosting provider, hoping that its issues with BREIN were solved. Previously, many sites have moved outside The Netherlands after threats from BREIN, including BTjunkie, Demonoid and What.cd.

Relocating has solved the issues for the aforementioned sites, but not for Torrentbits. Aside from using NFOrce as a hosting provider, the company also acted as the domain registrar for the .nl domain the site was using. So, in a second attempt to shut Torrentbit down, BREIN sent a request to NFOrce to make the domain unavailable.

NFOrce did not comply with this request immediately, but saw no other option than to do so if Torrentbitâ€™s owners did not make their identity know to BREIN so they could fight this out between themselves. Again, this was not a viable option for the Torrentbit administrator.

â€œIn order to be confident of my siteâ€™s future I decided to change domain to a .net extension and make it not so dependent on Dutch laws and existing court decisions,â€ Torrentbit founder Torro told TorrentFreak when explaining the recent domain change.

Torrentbit continues to operate just fine, but one has to wonder where this will end now domain registrars are becoming a target as well. For now these actions seem to be limited to The Netherlands and Russia, but in the United States the RIAA and MPAA are lobbying for registrars to disable â€˜infringingâ€™ sites as well.

It is obvious that BREIN is very creative in using verdicts of previous court cases as ammunition to put pressure on webhosting companies and also domain registrars. With two hosting providers having lost their cases against BREIN in court, it seems that most others would rather comply than put up a costly fight.

Movie Studios Threaten Strike On Pirate Bay Nuclear Bunker

2010-04-23T01:20:27Z

Last year, The Pirate Bay moved to an ISP that has facilities located in a former NATO nuclear bunker. It has operated with them successfully for some time but we can now reveal that Hollywood movie studios are threatening the ISP with a legal strike over its servicing of TPB and several other sites. The ISPâ€™s owner, however, is in no mood to capitulate.

In early October 2009, The Pirate Bay was forced to move outside its native Sweden and find a new host in Ukraine. Their stay in Eastern Europe didnâ€™t last long though, and soon they found a new and fairly unorthodox home.

CyberBunker is a former nuclear warfare bunker in The Netherlands. The facility was built by NATO in the 1950s and was designed to survive a nuclear war. After that threat largely subsided the bunker changed owners and is now believed to be used as a webhosting data center and is the presumed (in reality this is almost impossible to prove) home of The Pirate Bay.

CyberBunker: Threatened With MPA Strike

At the time, Sven Kamphuis, one of the owners of CB3ROB/Cyberbunker, said there were initial difficulties with setting up The Pirate Bay in its new location. Several carriers refused to assist following threats from local anti-piracy group, BREIN. Those problems were soon overcome but although The Pirate Bay continued to function and even grow, we can now exclusively reveal that there are turbulent seas ahead.

According to detailed information received by TorrentFreak, Disney Enterprises and Paramount Pictures in association with Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. (known collectively as the MPA) have been threatening CB3ROB Ltd with legal action over their hosting of The Pirate Bay and several other prominent movie-related sites.

Via its lawyers, in November 2009 the MPA sent CB3ROB a written â€œcopyright warningâ€ which stated that its members own the exclusive rights to a list of movies. The MPA further noted that CB3ROB is the Internet service provider for not only The Pirate Bay, but also movie streaming giants including Watch-Movies-Online.tv, Movie2K.com, TVShack.net, NovaMov.com and MovShare.com. Those sites, they say, are infringing their exclusive rights.

The complaint went on to detail the mechanics of The Pirate Bay, the guilty verdict delivered to its operators in a Swedish court in 2009 and the injunction placed on the site in the Amsterdam District Court in October the same year. Information on the nature of the streaming sites detailed above was also included.

The MPA warning then went on to suggest that since CB3ROB are aware that The Pirate Bay and the other sites are infringing, it is their responsibility to ensure that those infringements stop â€“ i.e, bring an end to providing them with hosting and bandwidth or, as appears to be the case with The Pirate Bay, filter out torrents relating to MPA member works. Failure to do so would result in the MPA taking CB3ROB to court in Germany.

A very tight deadline of a few days was set for a CB3ROB respond, which appears to have been adhered to. The response, however, was not what the MPA had hoped for.

Through their lawyers, CB3ROB rejected the claims of the MPA on several grounds including what they term as an incorrect description of The Pirate Bayâ€™s business model.

As readers will remember, last year the site â€œwent magneticâ€ by dumping its tracker and relying on DHT and PEX instead. Therefore, CB3ROB argued, the rulings against TPB in Sweden and The Netherlands related to a time when the siteâ€™s operations were conducted in a different manner. The complaint is further rejected on grounds that as an ISP, CB3ROB arenâ€™t responsible for the activities of its customers.

TorrentFreak spoke with Sven Olaf Kamphuis from CB3ROB who confirmed our information is correct.

â€œOnce again [Disney] tried to infringe upon the right to provider immunity and the concept of net neutrality by claiming that by providing the Pirate Bay (and others) with Internet connectivity we (CB3ROB Ltd. & Co. KG) would be â€˜assisting them in engaging in copyright violationsâ€™, which, should our customers be doing that, remains to be proven in court anyway,â€ he told us.

â€œThey tried this (as usual) by means of an injunction, which we have had our attorneys block by means of a â€œschutzbriefâ€ sent to all courts, basically saying they canâ€™t get an injunction without going through the usual court case process,â€ he added.

Kamphuis says that he believes German law is quite specific in granting provider immunity, with data communications receiving protection under the law in pretty much the same way as postal mail. He explained:

â€œProviders are immune to any liability claims as long as they:

1: Donâ€™t initiate the transfer of data (which we donâ€™t, the userâ€™s browser does)
2: Donâ€™t select the addressees (IP addresses in this case) of the information to be transferred (Which we donâ€™t, even Disney is free to use the PirateBay as far as weâ€™re concerned )
3: Donâ€™t modify or select the information to be transferred (which we donâ€™t)â€

Kamphuis told TorrentFreak that if Disney and friends have a problem with the activities of CB3ROB clients, they should start a court case against them, a route he notes that has been traveled before, without success.

â€œIf theyâ€™re too lazy (or donâ€™t have valid arguments) to win court cases against individual parties and force them to terminate their activities, that cannot and will not be made the problem of the Internet industry, we simply cannot tolerate that,â€ he insists. â€œTheyâ€™re trying to blackmail ISPs into cleaning up the mess caused by their dysfunctional business model, which the Internet industry, of course, will not do.â€

The information we received detailing CB3ROBâ€™s rejection of the Swedish and Dutch decisions was also confirmed.

â€œDisney apparently also canâ€™t read Dutch, nor Swedish, as all court verdicts so far are for the Pirate Bay WITH torrent trackers, which they seem to keep messing up with torrent-files. It would help if they would pick some attorneys to represent them who at the very minimum know what theyâ€™re talking about, and stop babbling nonsense.â€

Kamphuis insists that his company will accept anyone as a customer who can pay the bills and they will do everything required to deliver Internet connectivity to them â€“ period. As an ISP, he says, they provide this service indiscriminately, â€œ..but you know what,â€ he adds, â€œIâ€™ve got a great idea.â€

â€œWhy donâ€™t all ISPs just give them what they want and drop all packets that contain the word â€˜Disneyâ€™ from them, including the ones from and to -their- websites, letâ€™s see how long they last without using OUR internet for promoting and selling their shitty crap,â€ he concludes.

Italian ISP Not Responsible For File-Sharing Customers

2010-04-21T00:48:55Z

The far-reaching demands of an anti-piracy group working on behalf of the movie industry have been rejected by a judge. Federazione Anti-Pirateria Audiovisiva wanted ISP Telecom Italia to take unprecedented action against file-sharing subscribers, but the court decided that the ISP couldnâ€™t be held responsible for the actions of its customers.

After failing to bring online piracy under control by other methods, the music and movie industries have been increasingly turning to the courts to force ISPs into action against their own customers.

In Italy, movie anti-piracy group Fapav (Federazione Anti-Pirateria Audiovisiva) went to court in an attempt to compel Italyâ€™s largest ISP, Telecom Italia, to take unprecedented action against subscribers FAPAV say are infringing their membersâ€™ copyrights.

In a April 15th ruling that has just been made public, Judge Antonella Izzo largely rejected FAPAVâ€™s demands.

FAPAV wanted the court to force Telecom Italia to monitor its users, report those who file-share to the authorities, and block them along with a range of web locations including BitTorrent sites The Pirate Bay, 1337x and isoHunt. FAPAV had also called for fines of 10,000 euros per day if Telecom Italia refused to comply.

But in a big blow for FAPAV, Judge Izzo ruled that Internet service providers cannot be held responsible for the material carried over their networks and rejected calls for user and site blocking. The demand that huge fines should be imposed on Telecom Italia for non-compliance was also rejected.

The decision was welcomed by the rest of Italyâ€™s Internet service providers, who had feared the implications for their businesses should the case have gone FAPAVâ€™s way.

FAPAV didnâ€™t come away from the case entirely empty-handed though. It achieved token success when the judge ruled that ISPs should pass on copyright infringement complaints from rightsholders to the local prosecutor, rather than the current position where the rightsholders have to do that themselves.

After years spent souring relationships with their customers through legal action, one has to wonder about the extent of the damage now being done to the relationships between the entertainment industries and Internet service providers. Will the worldwide tour of expensive and damaging litigation against them continue, or will changes in the law negate the need for that approach? Time will tell.

Is Piracy Really Killing The Music Industry? No!

2010-04-18T21:23:45Z

For more than a decade the music industry has claimed that digital piracy is the main cause for the gradual decline in revenues. However, looking at the sales data of the music industry itself shows that the disappointing income might be better explained by a third factor that is systematically ignored.

After music cassettes were introduced in the mid-70s the number of sales saw a gradual increase, until the late 80s when the CD took over in popularity. Cassettes were eventually phased out as CD sales continued to skyrocket. In music industry vocabulary one could argue that CDs killed cassettes.

Interestingly enough, this format shift was nothing new for the music industry. The exact same pattern also applied to the LP/cassette battle, with cassettes eventually taking over from LPs in the early 80s. Now, three decades after cassettes started to dominate the music business, the CD is losing ground.

This time around there is a new enemy in town, digital piracy. For nearly a decade the U.S. music industry has seen a decline in sales of physical CDs and all this time it has put the blame on digital piracy. By doing so, the labels conveniently ignore the most drastic format shift music has ever seen â€“ the digital revolution.

With the growing popularity of the Internet, computers and most importantly MP3-players, music fans have started to trade in their CDs for MP3s and other digital files. Initially, the public had to convert CDs themselves, but in 2003 the iTunes store opened, selling over a million tracks in the first week.

With this shift from physical to digital, another important change hit the industry, one that may in part explain why the labelsâ€™ revenues in the U.S. continued to decline. With the introduction of paid downloads, consumers no longer had to buy a full album if they were only interested in two or three songs. This new freedom for consumers has dramatically changed the music sales landscape.

According to statistics taken from the RIAA shipment database, between 2004 and 2008 the number of single tracks sold in the U.S. increased by 669 percent while the number of album sales dropped 42 percent. Consequently, the income of the big labels suffered since single track sales are less profitable than full albums. As can be seen in the chart below, the number of music â€˜unitsâ€™ sold continues to grow rapidly nonetheless.

Music â€˜unitsâ€™ shipped in the United States

So where does piracy fit into this picture? Truth is, we just donâ€™t know.

File-sharing is obviously a by-product of the digital revolution in music, but its effect on revenues has been much overstated. In every annual report that comes out, the music industry blames piracy for its troubles, even though digital sales are booming and even though these are directly competing with piracy.

We believe that the format shift from physical to digital music, and the change in buying habits that came along with it, may explain the decline in revenue more than piracy can. To back this up weâ€™ve compared the labelsâ€™ revenues in two countries on opposite ends of the digital / physical rift, the U.S. and Germany.

Although piracy is rampant in both of these countries, the local music consumption habits are very different according to data published by IFPI. In Germany physical CDs are still very popular, with digital sales representing less than 25% of all music â€˜unitsâ€™ sold. In the U.S. on the other hand, digital outsells physical with 70% of all sales.

If the theory that the shift towards digital music is negatively impacting revenues holds up, then the German record labels should do much better. Indeed, between 2004 and 2008 the net revenue (in dollars) of the U.S record companies fell more than 30%, compared to less than 5% in Germany.

If the data above is not convincing enough, there is also another unexplained anomaly in the sales data.

If digital piracy is such a problem one would expect that it will mostly hurt digital sales, but these are booming instead. Many younger people donâ€™t even own a CD-player anymore, yet the music industry sees digital piracy as the main reason for the decline in physical sales. Strange, because digital piracy would be most likely to cannibalize digital sales. This anomaly also refutes the excuse that the U.S industry could be hit more by piracy than the German.

So what does the music industry have to say about this all? TorrentFreak asked the RIAA to comment on our findings and they released the following statement.

â€œWeâ€™ve always said there are multiple reasons for the decline of the industry during the past ten years: Competition for the entertainment dollar. Diversification of music consumption and access. But we also think people being able to steal music online is the primary reason. Not the only, but the primary.â€

We obviously have to differ with the RIAA here. The digital revolution in music has changed the entire industry by altering the consumption habits of music fans. Although piracy could also be a factor, the data weâ€™ve seen thus far suggests that it plays only a minor role, if it has any effect at all.

The Pirate Bay, A Year After The Verdict

2010-04-17T20:55:10Z

Exactly one year ago The Pirate Bay Four were sentenced to a year in prison, and on top of that each ordered to pay $905,000 in damages. The entertainment industries hoped that the ruling would set an example, but today The Pirate Bay is larger than ever before.

Millions of BitTorrent users all around the world followed the Pirate Bay trial with great interest last year. Many had hoped that the court would decide that operating a BitTorrent tracker was no offense and that the defendants would walk free.

The ten day trial started off with a small victory for the accused. On the second day the prosecutor announced that half of the charges against the four defendants had been dropped. The prosecutor couldnâ€™t prove that the .torrent files that were submitted as evidence actually used The Pirate Bayâ€™s tracker and therefore had to drop all charges of â€˜assisting copyright infringementâ€™.

What remained was the claim that the Pirate Bay folks were â€˜assisting in making copyright content availableâ€™. In the days that followed the defendantsâ€™ lawyers nullified the â€˜assistingâ€™ part by arguing that there was no link between the accused and users who download copyrighted material. The prosecution, on the other hand, argued the opposite and brought in screenshots of websites and torrent files as evidence.

On April 17th 2009, the verdict was announced and Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstrom were found guilty of â€˜assisting in making copyright content availableâ€™. The court sentenced each of the defendants to one year in prison and a fine of $905,000.

Immediately after the verdict the defendants announced they would appeal. In the weeks that followed the news came out that the judge who delivered the verdict had ties to several pro-copyright organizations. Following this news the defendantsâ€™ lawyers decided to file for a retrial, but this request was denied.

While awaiting the appeal that is currently scheduled to take place during the summer of 2010, The Pirate Bay continued to operate. Despite efforts from the entertainment industry to shut it down the site is now bigger than ever before. At the time of writing The Pirate Bay has 4,349,457 signed up members, growing by 105 members during the time taken to write this article.

This doesnâ€™t mean that nothing has changed though. In the months following the verdict there were plans for the site to be sold to a gaming company who wanted to transform it into a BitTorrent-powered media store. The takeover plans dominated the news for months but the deal eventually went bust in the fall of last year.

Around the same time, two of the founders of The Pirate Bay were told by the court that they could no longer be involved in the daily operations of the site. This didnâ€™t change much either because the two had already said that they were no longer involved in its operation. All this time, The Pirate Bay continued to serve torrents to the public.

Last November, The Pirate Bay decided to close down its tracker. According to The Pirate Bay team, BitTorrent has evolved up to a point where trackers are no longer needed. â€œWeâ€™re talking to the other torrent admins on doing magnet links,â€ a Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak at the time, adding that they might even stop serving torrents in the future.

Since November, The Pirate Bay has continued without a tracker, with its website gaining more and more users month after month. This relative calm is expected to last for a few more months until the appeal trial starts. When that happens, The Pirate Bay will have close to 5 million registered users, which is 4 million more than when the legal troubles began.

BitTorrent anonymity hack (seedfucker)

2010-04-15T13:11:05Z

A block of 86 lines of C# code is creating a buzz online following claims it may make BitTorrent downloads untraceable.

The code, sweetly named SeedFucker, is actually an exploit discovered last November that would allow a BitTorent user to fake the IP address of a server from where a file could be downloaded. It could also be used to flood a BitTorrent with dozens of fake peers. The sudden interest in the exploit follows measures in a new UK law, passed last week, where ISPs may be obliged to provide IP addresses to the authorities of files that are said to be infringing copyright.

Since the Digital Economy Bill passed in a heavily criticised â€œwash-upâ€ process in the final Parliamentary session before a general election, coders have been working hard on developing a new generation of download software that will make it impossible even for ISPs to identify where files are being stored.

It is unlikely that SeedFucker in its current form would achieve that goal, but the exploit itself has coders excited about the possibilities of a truly anonymous downloading system.

Of course, this is not the first time that heavy-handed action on the part of the authorities has caused a rapid evolution in software used to spread files around the Internet. Most famously, Napster was shutdown by the music industry because it allowed people to share and download music files. The weak point in that case was Napsterâ€™s own servers which made the connections between users and files.

No sooner had Napster been taken down than a new method of file sharing, BitTorrent, was rapidly adopted. BitTorrent allows people to share files held on their hard drives across the Internet in very small pieces, with every person downloading each piece also becoming a source for download so long as they maintain an Internet connection. (The Napster shutdown also led to a big increase in size of the so-called Dark Net where private Internets are set up and taken down outside the view of any authorities).

The BitTorrent iteration led to extensive efforts to shut down websites that held the initial seed files needed to start a download, with mixed success. The Pirate Bay became the target of international pressure after it thumbed its nose at both the music and film industries after broadband speeds made the exchange of video files a practical reality. The organizationâ€™s website was briefly taken down after a raid by the Swedish authorities.

With companies now determinedly lobbying governments to force the providers of Internet access themselves â€“ ISPs â€“ to provide details of exchanged files, coders are working on ways to further anonymize the process.

How successful that approach will be, or whether it is an inevitability given enough time, we shall have to see, but watching the enthusiasm surrounding SeedFucker, it is certain that if a solution is found it will rapidly make a mockery of the laws hurriedly passed without sufficient democratic review last week.

And after that, where then? Legally enforced requirements for software to use specific port numbers? Mandatory use of iPads so only Steve Jobs can decide what you can use the Internet for? Who knows? Â®

Trojan scam "illegal torrent" fine

2010-04-15T12:50:03Z

Security firm F-Secure has issued a warning to PC users following the release of a nasty Trojan claiming to be an "Antipiracy foundation scanner".

This timely, relevant scam has emerged at a time when fears of anti-piracy punishment is at an all time high following the passing of the Digital Economy bill last week.

The Trojan has been set up to steal credit card details from web users, masking as a scanner which has found illegal torrents on the user's system. Every time the user reboots their computer this Trojan encourages users to pay up $400 (Â£259) to the ICPP Foundation as part of a "pre-trial settlement". This pop-up warns users they could end up facing a jail sentence if they fail to settle.

Despite setting up an authentic-looking website (www.icpp-online.com) F-Secure has confirmed there is no ICPP Foundation and that it is very likely the Trojan will pop-up even if there are no illegal torrents on the system. There also appears to be no credit-card payment system connected to the site so the scammers simply collect any entered credit card information.

Urging PC users to be vigilant and to check systems with an antivirus programme to detect and remove Trojans, F-Secure's chief research officer, Mikko H Hypponen, explained: "The gang behind this attack already has large botnets at their disposal. We assume they simply upload this malicious application to the bots they already control." He added: "People know that movie studios and record labels are playing hardball against pirates. This might actually make some users fall for this scam."

IFPI Upset As Italian Minister Admits Heâ€™s A File-Sharer

2010-04-13T13:22:49Z

An Italian minister has stirred up controversy by not only criticizing the efforts of the French to disconnect file-sharers from the Internet, but by also admitting heâ€™s a pirate himself. Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, a musician himself, believes the solution to online file-sharing lies in a compromise, where music is paid for by advertisers and sponsors.

â€œIntroducing heavy penalties such as those in France to disconnect people from the Internet is wrong and does not work,â€ Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said recently as he openly criticized the French 3-strikes â€™solutionâ€™ to illicit file-sharing. He says the answer lies with a more creative approach.

â€œA proposal I have made for some time without being heard is the creation of a great national site where people can legally download music for free,â€ says Maroni. He believes the cost of such a service could be met by advertisers and sponsors.

A keen musician himself with his band 51 District, Maroni says that he listens to music on his iPod wherever he goes. â€œI do not spend a day without music,â€ he noted. But where Maroni gets his music from has been raising a few eyebrows.

Speaking with Italian media, the Minister admitted that heâ€™s a pirate himself, as he downloads illicit music from the Internet. Although there are probably many, many more â€œin the closetâ€, to our knowledge, this is the first â€˜pirateâ€™ confession by a European minister.

Maroni, who already admitted to illicit file-sharing back in 2006, is unrepentant and says he sees his actions as a provocation. Heâ€™s making a stand because he believes that people should be able to download for free, a method of obtaining music he insists is not a crime.

The Minister said that acquiring music in this way is not the same as stealing from a supermarket, noting that all people are doing is taking a copy from someone else over a network.

â€œIt is as if the owner of this computer where Iâ€™m going to take the music from did a copy of a CD he bought and gave it to me, something that normally happens when we buy a CD and make copies for our friends,â€ he added.

FIMI, the Italian branch of the IFPI, were cleared disappointed by Maroniâ€™s comments.

â€œA few million music tracks legally downloaded for free, over a billion click-free videos on Youtube by officers of Italian artists, more than 90% of individual files sold at less than one euro from dozens of platforms. The Minister should consider the risk to jobs and loss of revenues to the state because of digital piracy,â€ the music group said in a statement.

Maroniâ€™s comments follow in the wake of a recent Communications Regulatory Authority report which concluded that not only does piracy fail to create the economic damages claimed by the entertainment industries, but repressive policies and monitoring are unconstitutional, unnecessary and harmful.

Malware Extorts Cash From BitTorrent Users

2010-04-11T22:33:26Z

A new type of malware is riding the wave of file-sharing pre-settlement letters by infecting BitTorrent usersâ€™ machines and then demanding payments in order to make imaginary lawsuits go away. ICPP Foundation try to give the impression they are RIAA and MPAA affiliated but the whole thing is a scam to extort cash and obtain credit card details.

ICCP Foundation claims to be an international company operating out of Switzerland. They say they are â€œcommitted to promoting the cultural and economic benefits of copyrightâ€ while assisting their partners to fight â€œcopyright theft around the worldâ€.

In fact what they really do is operate a scam to extort money from BitTorrent users.

Right at this moment we are unsure of the exact route of infection, but somehow malware (probably in either fake file or attached virus form) is displaying a â€œcopyright violation alertâ€ on the victimâ€™s screen, locking it, and redirecting users to the ICPP site where they are told they have been caught infringing copyright.

There they are warned their offenses could result in 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine and are given the option to take the (fake) case to court. They are also offered a chance to make the whole thing go away for the payment of a â€˜fineâ€™ of around $400. Victims are also prompted to give their name, address and full credit card details â€“ it is unclear how this information is further abused but it doesnâ€™t look good.

If they select the court option, they are scared with this screen:

So that that this evil software (believed to be located at C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\IQManager\iqmanager.exe) more accurately targets BitTorrent users rather than just random users, it appears to scan the userâ€™s hard drive for .torrent files and displays these as â€˜evidenceâ€™ of an earlier infringement.

In order to boost their credibility, icpp-online.com claim to be affiliated with influential partners â€“ the RIAA, MPAA, and The Copyright Alliance. Of course, this is a complete fabrication.

This whole approach seems very similar to that employed by so-called â€˜rogue softwareâ€˜ or â€™scarewareâ€™ which attempt to frighten users into parting with cash for often useless software. And it seems the links to malware donâ€™t stop there.

A WHOIS on the ICPP-Online domain reveals some contact data which shows up elsewhere in connection to other questionable activities.

Details on this new threat are scarce at the moment, so if any readers can discover more about this malware or the operation behind it, please collate the information and send it over to tips@torrentfreak.com.

Anti-Piracy Group Gets Heavy Over Leaked Lady Gaga Itinerary

2010-04-11T01:56:38Z

Music Industry Piracy Investigations group has made copyright threats to a music news site after they reported on a new Lady Gaga leak. Surprisingly, the leak in question wasnâ€™t a new track or album, but a revealing itinerary for Lady Gagaâ€™s activities in Australia this week.

Lady Gaga has been in Australia since mid March. She celebrated her 24th birthday at a concert in Melbourne and had her final show in Sydney on Wednesday.

Yesterday, US-based music news site Earsucker.com reported on a rather interesting Gaga leak, not a new or secret track, but her detailed itinerary from April 4th until today. The documents were leaked by one of her staff (pictures below).

In a letter dated today, Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), an Australia-based anti-piracy group, began threatening Earsucker.com. They claimed that publishing the itinerary was an infringement of copyright and breach of confidentiality â€œwhich may result in significant loss and damageâ€ to Lady Gaga. Remove the item, or else, MIPI informed the site.

Earsucker refused to comply, noting that as a US-based site they are not bound by the Australian laws MIPI cited and adding that they were not the original leaker or publisher of the material, and are further protected under journalism shields. Earsucker also issued an infringement counter-notification.

â€œWhat can I say except that a goon in a suit in Australia is no different from a goon in a suit here in the U.S. (though they get to subject their own citizens to much more draconian censorship),â€ Earsucker VP Stephen VanDyke told TorrentFreak.

VanDyke told us that heâ€™s â€œjust trying to mess with the international goonsâ€ before the US gets hit with ACTA and they are actually allowed to bring claims cross-border, adding: â€œI urge people to do whatever they can to harass and be a general nuisance to the censorship regimes, even if it means cross-border Internet shenanigans with folks like MIPI.â€

â€œThese people should really get a clue about the Barbara Streisand effect. I mean, now TorrentFreak can distribute the images and news of the images (everyone must know!!) and further mess with them, and who knows where this stupid itinerary photo could end up,â€ VanDyke concluded.

Lady Gaga Itineraryâ€™s

Another One

uTorrent Download Speeds Beat Vuze By 16%

2010-04-08T08:22:25Z

A new study comparing the download speeds of more than 10 million BitTorrent users found that uTorrent users achieve significantly higher download speeds than those who use Vuze. On some ISPs this advantage, which is attributed to differences in design choices, can be as much as 30%.

For nearly half a decade uTorrent and Vuze have been two of the leading BitTorrent clients. If we leave out China, the two applications together hold three quarters of the market share which equals close to 100 million users a month.

In an attempt to determine which of the two get the best download speeds, University of California researcher Marios Iliofotou together with colleagues from Telefonica Research inspected the download speeds of more than 10 million BitTorrent downloaders last August. The results have been collated in a short paper (pdf) and it turns out that there are some big differences between the two BitTorrent clients.

As an initial sample the 600 most popular torrents on the Pirate Bay were used. The torrents were tracked for a month and a representative sample of one week was used for the final analysis. For each torrent an equal number or uTorrent and Vuze users were selected and these were also matched by ISP, so the type of torrent or ISP could not influence the results.

The research revealed a remarkable speed difference with uTorrent users getting 16% higher download speeds than Vuze users. On average uTorrent users reached a 176 Kbps download speed while Vuze users were stuck at 151 Kbps on the same torrents and with the same ISPs.

More detailed analysis revealed that uTorrent users get faster downloads on all of the 30 most used ISPs, except Verizon where there was virtually no difference. On 10% of these ISPs, uTorrent users were downloading 30% faster than Vuze users.

uTorrent vs. Vuze speeds

To find out what might be responsible for these speed differences the researchers reverse engineered both BitTorrent clients. They speculate that the distribution of upload capacity to peers is one of the underlying reasons. On average, uTorrent shares data with more peers than Vuze.

Differences in how the clients handles connections to â€˜neighborsâ€™, how they discover new peers and when they decide to close connections are also mentioned as factors that may have led to the observed speed differences.

The scope of the report is limited to Vuze and uTorrent but in future work the researchers hope to include other clients too. In addition they plan to confirm these results in a lab environment, to try and find out what constitutes the fastest BitTorrent client.

â€œThis work does not aim to design the best BitTorrent client, but to bring to the attention of BitTorrent implementors and users that some design choices have a significant effect in practice. Even though in our study uTorrent appears to achieve faster speeds than Vuze, we do not claim that uTorrent is the way to go,â€ the researchers write.

â€œWe hope that our preliminary findings will open the door for new research efforts to better understand the impact of design choices in the performance of real-world BitTorrent implementations. Ultimately, we see such research efforts leading to the design of better P2P systems,â€ the researchers conclude.

Retired Fireman Caught Pirating Avatar

2010-04-07T12:29:40Z

Police have used a new file-sharing tracking system to hunt down a man sharing the movies Avatar and Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The 62-year-old pensioner and retired fireman wasnâ€™t the first uploader of either movie. He has admitted sharing 500 movies in the last 4 years.

After the introduction of a new file-sharing monitoring system this year, Kyoto Prefectural Police Crime Prevention Office Tech 31 in Japan appeared to have snared their first victim.

Following an investigation which began January 1st, a retired fireman was arrested in Shizuoka on March 31st on allegations he uploaded the movies Avatar and Percy Jackson and the Olympians last year using the â€œShareâ€ software.

Sato Mori, a 62 year-old who worked in Numazu City, was tracked down after the new system identified him as an uploader of the movies. Although the system is said to be able to find â€˜first releasersâ€™ â€“ individuals who are the first to put new material on the Internet â€“ this man appears to be innocent of that offense.

Mori apparently obtained the movies from other file-sharing systems and uploaded them using â€œShare,â€ a file-sharing application which claims to hide ones identity, on December 20, 2009 at 4:30pm.

â€œI wanted everyone to be a happy film lover,â€ he reportedly told police.

In addition to the two sample movies, police say that Mori admitted uploading a further 500 movies during the last 4 years. It is unknown what kind of sentence the retired fireman will be facing for the alleged offences.

Tribler Evolves Its Decentralized BitTorrent Ecosystem

2010-04-05T21:56:04Z

In a time where torrent sites increasingly draw the short straw in legal cases brought by copyright holders, the developers of the Tribler BitTorrent client continue working on a decentralized BitTorrent ecosystem. Their latest release includes several features to avoid spam and ensure fast downloads.

Researchers from the Tribler P2P team at the Technical University of Delft, Netherlands, have been working on their next generation BitTorrent client for a few years now.

The project has been awarded millions of euros in funding from the European Union. With this money, the researchers have been developing a new BitTorrent ecosystem where torrent sites are no longer needed.

To achieve this goal the search functionality of the new Tribler client is fully distributed, meaning that the torrents come from within the network of peers and not from a torrent site or a central server. This could potentially make BitTorrent indexers such as The Pirate Bay and isoHunt obsolete.

The downside of this type of search is that it is impossible to remove or moderate spam and fake files. In order to solve this problem the Tribler team has implemented a SwarmRank feature which ranks torrents based on their trustworthiness and speed.

â€œSwarmRank is inspired by Googleâ€™s PageRank algorithm which is used to keep Google search results neat, tidy and relevant,â€ Dr. Johan Pouwelse, lead researcher at the Tribler P2P team, told TorrentFreak.

Another new feature based on the trust idea implemented in the latest Tribler release is a reputation score for downloaders called BarterCast. With this feature the Tribler team hopes to achieve higher download speeds for users who share the most.

To reward seeding the Tribler client doesnâ€™t rely on sharing ratios like most private BitTorrent trackers do. Instead, every peer that shares valid pieces of a file will simply become more trustworthy. The more users upload, the more their reputation score increases and the higher their download speeds will be.

Below is a picture of a previous version of Tribler which includes a test version of their BarterCast reputation system. It shows how peers automatically form a web-of-trust.

Web-of-Trust

With the new SwarmRank and BarterCast features, Tribler has made a step forward in preventing spam filling up its decentralized BitTorrent environment. â€œBy adding reputations for both swarms and peers we have a new tool against spam and pollution in Bittorrent, while we can reward seeding,â€ Dr. Pouwelse told TorrentFreak.

We have to admit that the Tribler team is working on some fascinating stuff. However, thus far the client still has a very small market share which is not ideal for a decentralized system like this. Depending on what the future has in store for BitTorrent, this may change quickly. The good thing is that the client is entirely Open Source so other developers can take advantage of the research if needed.

Torrents.net, Great Domain for a Fresh Torrent Index

2010-04-04T16:27:48Z

Every month a few dozen new BitTorrent sites are unleashed on the Internet, but only a few have something new to offer. One site that popped up recently is worth mentioning, if only for the fact that it has one of the best domains for a BitTorrent index, Torrents.net.

Every week new BitTorrent sites appear, hoping to win the hearts and minds of the BitTorrent community. Only a few of these make it past the first year and even less manage to get enough traction to be noticed in the first place.

One new torrent site that launched recently has the potential to become a household name. The domain name Torrents.net is a good start to say the least. Aside from the fancy domain, the operators of the site are familiar names with more than half a decade of experience with running BitTorrent indexers.

The site is a combined project from the people behind two other well known torrent sites, whoâ€™ve joined forces aiming to create the ultimate BitTorrent index. Although this is an honorable goal, they still have a lot of work to do to make the site stand out from the competition.

Torrents.net pretty much has all the basic features a torrent index should have, including the magnet links which gained a lot of popularity in recent months after The Pirate Bay gave them a much-needed plug. On the frontpage Torrents.net lists todayâ€™s and yesterdayâ€™s most popular torrents as well as some featured downloads provided by Viewcave.

Ironically, the featured downloads are only available in the United States, UK, Canada and Australia, which is due to licensing issues â€“ dusty reminder of the entertainment industriesâ€™ old business models.

TorrentFreak spoke to Eric, one of the lead developers of the new torrent site, to find out what this fuss is all about. â€œWe started torrents.net because we wanted to give everyone a clean browsing experience. We have minimal ads, no popups or full page ads unlike other torrent sites,â€ he said.

Eric further said that they will be working hard to make the site stand out from the rest. â€œWe plan to have more content providers featured on the front page. We also have a bunch of new features up our sleeve. One of them is to show subtitles while browsing a video page along with box covers. Another is to have lyrics displayed when viewing a music page.â€

â€œWe strive to give everyone the best torrent experience,â€ Eric added. Heâ€™s right there, in the end a fancy domain name doesnâ€™t buy you anything, it is the content and user experience that makes a BitTorrent site a success.

Anti-Piracy Lawyers Vandalize Wikipedia Page

2010-04-03T14:10:31Z

As mass file-sharing litigation lawsuits go inter-continental, not everyone is proud to be associated with this type of work. Lawyers Tilly Bailey & Irvine in the UK have been hard at work this month, editing large chunks of their own Wikipedia page in an attempt to hide their involvement and also earning themselves a copyright infringement warning.

This week, Jeffrey Weaver, a lawyer for U.S. Copyright Group, proudly announced that the company would be bringing the mass-litigation model against alleged BitTorrent users to the United States.

â€œWeâ€™re creating a revenue stream and monetizing the equivalent of an alternative distribution channel,â€ he unashamedly confirmed.

This business model has been running ahead at full-steam in Germany and the UK for some time now. As they do most of the work and are seen to do most of the perceived bullying of individuals ill-equipped to defend themselves, the lawyers operating these schemes have been singled out for most of the criticism.

Tilly Bailey & Irvine (TBI), the lawyers who have just made their first steps into this business model in the UK, had a very stormy entrance. Within weeks their activities had been noted negatively by the Government and had their traditional 170 year-old company publicly connected with their porn-industry customers.

Of course, the antics of TBI havenâ€™t gone unnoticed by the tech-savvy, who have been adding details of their involvement in these schemes to the companyâ€™s Wikipedia page, as detailed below:

Volume litigation

On 1 March 2010, Lord Clement-Jones criticised TBI Solicitors along with firm ACS:Law for tactics that they employed when accusing people of copyright infringement.[11] He called TBI Solicitors â€œnew entrants to the hall of infamyâ€[11] and their activities â€œan embarrassment to the rest of the creative rights industryâ€.[11]

On 3 March, UK consumer rights website Which? reported complaints by people who had received letters from TBI Solicitors accusing them of illegally sharing files of pornographic material that belongs to Golden Eye (International).[12] TBI Solicitors threatened legal action against the lettersâ€™ recipients unless they paid ?700 compensation within fourteen days of the date of the letter.[12] On 9 March, Which? reported an undertaking by Lord Young that the government would keep watch on ACS:Law and TBI Solicitors.[13]

In an attempt to remove this embarrassing information, a staff member at Tilly Bailey & Irvine took direct action â€“ by deleting the entire section ten days after TorrentFreak broke the news of their entrance to this business.

So, how do we know it was TBI doing the editing? Because they were smart enough to edit it from 195.153.132.204, the IP address registered to their company.

â€œPlease do not remove sourced content from Wikipedia, as you did with TBI Solicitors â€” this is vandalism,â€ wrote a Wikipedia admin to Tilly Bailey & Irvine.

â€œFurthermore, your IP address geolocates to â€˜TILLY BAILEY & IRVINEâ€™ which suggests that you have a conflict of interest in removing criticism of the firm from Wikipedia. I suggest that you familiarise yourself with that policy before editing this particular article any further,â€ added the award-winning user, Rlandmann.

The final embarrassment on the TBI â€˜talkâ€™ page prompted another comment by Rlandmann.

Copyright problem

Iâ€™ve also removed a large chunk of text from the TBI Solicitors article that was copied-and-pasted from the thisishartlepool website. This creates a potential copyright problem for Wikipedia.

TorrentFreak has learned that Tilly Bailey & Irvine has already dropped some cases against alleged infringers after they denied their accusations. Weâ€™re not sure if the editing of their Wikipedia page means that they intend to move out of this business altogether, since thus far they have refused to answer any of our questions, but it would be a welcome move.

High Court Finds Newzbin Liable For Copyright Infringement

2010-03-31T00:16:53Z

Newzbin, the Internetâ€™s premier Usenet indexer, has lost its High Court case against several Hollywood movie studios. Justice Kitchin found the company, which turned over more than Â£1 million in 2009, liable for copyright infringement and will issue an injunction restricting its activities later this week.

The London High Court showdown between Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Warner Bros., Paramount, Disney, Columbia Pictures and Newzbin Ltd ended earlier this month.

Mr Adrian Speck represented the claimants, with David Harris and later Ms Jane Lambert representing Newzbin. The case was heard before Mr Justice Kitchin, who this morning delivered his lengthy decision which is summarized below.

The claimants said that Newzbin is a site focused on piracy. It does this by locating and categorizing illicit copies of movies and displays the titles in its indexes, providing users who search for such items a facility to download the items with one click.

Newzbin conversely said that its site is a â€œcontent agnosticâ€ search engine very much like Google, and is designed to index all of Usenet. It offers only hyperlinks, meaning that users can access material directly from their Usenet provider, an activity Newzbin plays no part in.

Mr Speck represented the claimants throughout the case but Mr Harris dropped out of defending Newzbin on February 10th when it became apparent he had acquired shares in Newzbin. Ms Lambert took over from him when the trial resumed on 2 March 2010.

The claimants used Andrew Clark, Head of Forensics at Detica Limited, as their expert witness. His description of Usenet was not challenged in court.

Newzbin is run by Chris Elsworth (aka â€œCaesiumâ€), Thomas Hurst (aka â€œFreakyâ€) and Lee Skillen (aka â€œKalanteâ€). All three were, until recently, directors and shareholders in Newzbin.

Court documents give a perhaps surprising insight into the size of the Newzbin business. Its accounts for 2009 reveal that it turned over in excess of Â£1 million, yielded a profit of more than Â£360,000 and paid dividends on ordinary shares of Â£415,000. It has around 700,000 members.

Newzbinâ€™s help guides were referred to in the decision. They state that the site can help people find what theyâ€™re looking for, â€œwhether that be obscure music, tv shows, games or movies. Think of us as a TV guide, but weâ€™re a guide that applies to Usenet.â€

In addition to various features offered by the site, focus was placed on the function and offering of .NZB files â€“ Usenetâ€™s nearest equivalent to .torrent files. Expert witness Mr Clark demonstrated how they could be used to retrieve a copy of a Harry Potter movie via Newzbin with the Usenet client, GrabIt.

The titles of categories used by Newzbin to index content were highlighted, such as Anime, Apps, Books, Consoles, Emulation, Games, Movies, Music, PDA and TV.

Sub-sections of the Movies category were highlighted including CAM, Screener, Telesync, R5 Retail, Blu-Ray, DVD, HD-DVD DivX, XviD. A witness for FACT, the Federation Against Copyright Theft, explained in detail why some of these categories are a â€œstrong indicationâ€ of piracy.

Newzbin has members called â€˜editorsâ€™ who help to compile reports on material to be found on Usenet. Newzbinâ€™s own documentation was used to show that the site encouraged editors to post links to movies. The verdict notes that to assist editors useful links to IMDb and VCDQuality are provided, the latter being useful to provide information about â€œscreenersâ€.

Referencing rules that Newzbin publishes for the attention of editors, ostensibly to protect the site (i.e not posting NZBâ€™s which link to warez, movies or music), Justice Kitchin states that these warnings are â€œentirely cosmeticâ€, are not intended, nor are they adhered to. Newzbin knew that infringing copies were being made available to users and yet no action was taken against editors, he wrote.

Referring to groups indexed by Newzbin such as alt.binaries.warez, Justice Kitchin said he is satisfied that the term â€˜warezâ€™ refers to content protected by copyright from illicit sources. Newzbin, he said, is therefore designed to search newsgroups which contain infringing material, an assertion that Newzbinâ€™s Chris Elsworth had no â€œsatisfactory explanationâ€ for.

Justice Kitchin said Newzbin â€œencouraged its editors to report and has assisted its users to gain accessâ€ to infringing copies of movies.

Newzbin was also criticized for its â€œdelistingâ€ or notice and takedown procedures, which were referred to as a â€œcosmeticâ€ and â€œcumbersomeâ€ mechanism designed to â€œrender it impracticalâ€ for rights holders to have material removed.

Justice Kitchin went on to reject Newzbinâ€™s assertion that an insignificant amount of links in their database relate to infringing content. Around 50,000 reports (.NZBs) were checked and around 97% had a valid link to IMDb (TF: Kitchin apparently assumes that everything on IMDB is not free to share), 0.7% to Amazon and a further 1.5% were otherwise shown to be commercially available. Only 0.3% were not shown to be commercially available, evidence which the court found â€œextremely powerfulâ€.

The verdict addresses in some detail whether Newzbin had knowledge of infringing material being made available via the site. Newzbin said they did not but wouldâ€™ve taken action to remove items and take action against any editor posting such material. Justice Kitchen said â€œa very different pictureâ€ emerged when Elsworth was cross-examined.

A transcript of the questioning reveals Elsworth being aggressively cross-examined over the nature of the Blu-Ray category on the site and whether it would contain copyright infringing material.

â€œI am satisfied that Mr Elsworth well knew that these categories were primarily intended for new commercial films,â€ wrote Justice Kitchin, while referencing a comment made by Elsworth in January 2007 where he notes that Blu-Ray had â€œbeen cracked officiallyâ€.

The verdict also states that Newzbin was told that the site is being used to infringe the claimantsâ€™ copyrights, yet no action has been taken against those reports (NZBs), the editors that reported them, or users that downloaded them.

Justice Kitchin said that considering the structure of Newzbin, the way they categorize content and the way they have encouraged editors to report movies, he has no doubt that Newzbin knew that â€œthe vast majority of films in the Movies category of Newzbin are commercial and so very likely to be protected by copyright, and that members of Newzbin who use its NZB facility to download those materials, including the claimantsâ€™ films, are infringing that copyright.â€

For the claimants, Mr Clark gave evidence that it would be straightforward for Newzbin to restrict access to the Movie and TV categories on the site and/or employ a filter based on a list of titles provided by the movie companies. Justice Kitchin said that the Newzbin programmers are skilled enough to implement â€œan effective content filtering system.â€

Justice Kitchin found that:

i) Newzbin operates a site â€œdesigned and intended to make infringing copies of films readily available to its premium membersâ€.
ii) The site is structured to promote infringement by guiding members to infringing copies via NZBs.
iii) Use of the NZB feature â€œinevitablyâ€ results in the creation of an infringing copy.
iv) Newzbin encouraged and induced its editors to make reports of movies protected by copyright and assisted users to infringe by providing advice.
v) Newzbin profited from infringement.

Newzbin was found liable to the claimants for infringement of their copyrights because it authorized the copying of their movies, â€œprocured and engaged with its premium members in a common design to copy the claimantsâ€™ filmsâ€ and communicated the claimantsâ€™ movies to the public.

The claimants appear to be seeking a broad injunction against Newzbin which would prevent it from including any item which infringes copyright in their index. This would extend to all works, not just those to which the claimants own the copyright.

Justice Kitchin wrote that he will not grant such a broad injunction and would instead impose limits on its scope to restrain Newzbin from infringing the copyrights of those movies to which the plaintiffs own the copyright.

â€œWe welcome the Courtâ€™s decision today,â€ said Ted Shapiro, the Motion Picture Associationâ€™s general counsel for Europe.

â€œNewzbin is a source of immense damage to the creative sector in the UK and worldwide. This is an important decision and it sends a clear message that websites focusing on providing viewers with pirated film and TV programmes infringe copyright and are liable for their actions even where those websites donâ€™t themselves host the content.

â€œThis decision will help to support the continued investment in new legal online services and the creation of new films and television shows for enjoyment by audiences both in the UK and around the world.â€

Newzbin was given the opportunity to contribute to this and earlier articles, but did not respond to our requests.

The exact terms of the injunction will be announced later this week.

Warner Bros. Recruits Students to Spy on Pirates

2010-03-30T10:50:42Z

Warner Bros Entertainment UK is recruiting tech-savvy students to help the company with their anti-piracy efforts. During the 12 month internship the students will have to maintain accounts at private BitTorrent sites, develop link-scanning bots, make trap purchases and perform various other anti-piracy tasks.

warner brosThe people who work at the anti-piracy divisions of Warner Bros. and other large media companies have to be experts in file-sharing technology. It is therefore no surprise that Warner Bros. is actively recruiting students for a job as Anti-Piracy Intern, as most students have grown up sharing files.

Warner Bros Entertainment UK is currently offering an internship to â€œIT literateâ€ students with knowledge of file-sharing networks to assist in the companyâ€™s ongoing anti-piracy efforts. The internship deals with both digital and physical piracy and among other things the applicant will have to make trap purchases and maintain accounts at private file-sharing sites.

The intern will further have to scour the Internet for illegally posted Warner Bros. and NBC Universal content and gather intelligence on the sites that offer these pirated goods. One of the more boring tasks listed in the job description is the sending of takedown requests and infringement notices to sites and users.

The full job description taken from the vacancy (pdf) at The University of Manchester reads as follows:

During the 12 month internship, duties will include: monitoring local Internet forums and IRC for pirated WB and NBCU content and in order to gather information on pirate sites, pirate groups and other pirate activities; finding new and maintaining existing accounts on private sites; scanning for links to hosted pirated WB and NBCU content and using tools to issue takedown requests; maintaining and developing bots for Internet link scanning system (training provided); preparing sending of infringement notices and logging feedback; performing trap purchases of pirated product and logging results; inputting pirate hard goods data and other intelligence into the forensics database; selecting local keywords and submitting local filenames for monitoring and countermeasure campaigns and periodically producing research documents on piracy related technological developments. Various training will be provided.

The lucky student who gets the job will receive a Â£17,500 salary for the 12 month internship that starts July 2010. Applicants are required to study a degree in a computing related discipline and programming experience with Java or JSP and PHP, Perl or Python is seen as a bonus.

We encourage all eligible TorrentFreak readers to apply for this exciting internship and provide us with regular updates on Warner Brosâ€™ anti-piracy efforts. You have to be quick though, the vacancy closes on March 31.

World War II Veterans Must Pay To Sing War Songs

2010-03-28T23:30:58Z

Veterans of World War II who sang war songs at a free concert last year have now been told that they must pay fees to copyright holders. A collections society says they are owed money since the veterans sang the songs in public. The controversy has prompted an announcement in Russiaâ€™s parliament.

Music played an important part during World War II. It was used to boost the morale of both soldiers and civilians during the conflict and since then war songs have endured, particularly in the hearts of those that survived the fighting.

Although the casualties on all sides during World War II were absolutely horrendous, the losses suffered by the then U.S.S.R were staggering â€“ almost 27 million people lost their lives.

Last September a World War II veterans choir held a concert in Samara, one of Russiaâ€™s largest cities. At the free event they sang those songs that helped them through the fighting and have provided them with nostalgia since.

However, the Russian Authors Society (RAS) has now filed a claim with the organizers of the concert. It appears that since the war songs the veterans sang are copyrighted, fees have to be paid to RAS. Understandably the veterans are pretty upset and many simply donâ€™t understand what is happening.

â€œWe sang to convey an educational message to our grandchildren,â€ said one performer. â€œAnd we have to pay for that? Is this not a crime?â€

In order for the songs to have been performed legally at the event, a licensing agreement should have been entered into with RAS, something which was not done, says RAS Deputy Director, Oleg Partin.

The controversy prompted an announcement in the lower house of the Russian parliament that the Arts Committee should be convened immediately. Copyright is there to fight piracy, they said, not to fight veterans.

â€œThis is nonsense! It is unacceptable that those who sing the wonderful songs of WWII will have to pay a bribe,â€ said Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov. â€œI believe that in this case insanity grows stronger and stronger. Now it has arrived at complete stupidity.â€

On May 9th 1945, Russia celebrated the end of the Great Patriotic War. The 65th anniversary of that day arrives in just a few weeks and it now seems that RAS is trying to make amends for the hurt caused earlier. They are suggesting that changes should be made so that singing war songs on that day is a free activity.

Rapidshare Aims To Convert Pirates Into Customers

2010-03-27T22:22:05Z

The file-hosting service Rapidshare is seeking major entertainment industry partners for an online store where links to infringing material will redirect to. The plan is an attempt to bridge the gap between copyright holders and users of the site who distribute infringing material.

Similar to many other companies that operate in the file-sharing business, Rapidshare often finds itself caught between two fires. On the one hand it wants to optimize the user experience, but by doing so they have to respect the rights holders to avoid being continuously dragged to court.

To ease the minds of some major executives in the entertainment industry, Rapidshareâ€™s General Manager Bobby Chang has revealed an ambitious plan through which copyright holder could benefit from the file-hosting service. At the same time, Chang says that his company will target uploaders of copyrighted material â€“ who he refers to as criminals â€“ more aggressively.

Earlier this week we already hinted at Rapidshareâ€™s intention to terminate accounts of copyright infringers. In that article we made the mistake of quoting a fake email that has been circulating for a while, which suggested that Rapidshare had been logging IP-addresses for legal purposes. In reality, the company has only been terminating the accounts of infringing uploaders.

The true reason for us posting the earlier article was founded on information we obtained completely separately and was totally unrelated to the misquoted email.

TorrentFreak recently received documentation showing communication between Rapidshareâ€™s General Manager Bobby Chang and representatives of the entertainment industry which is 100% genuine. In the documentation we have Chang reveals some of Rapidshareâ€™s future plans.

â€œI would like to use this mail to inform you about some changes of our companyâ€™s business strategy. RapidShareâ€™s supervisory board has decided to not just rely on the filehosting business but to extend our companyâ€™s efforts to officially distribute licensed content,â€ begins Chang in his writing to the media executives. Rapidshareâ€™s manager then goes on to explain how the filehosting business is currently undergoing some major changes.

â€œFor quite a few weeks and months we have seen changes in the filehosting business. Several new players are trying heavily and with shady or unfair business practices to get into the market. I am convinced that most of those new players are trying really hard to gain the favor of those users, who rely on cyberlockers to spread and distribute copyright protected content,â€ he writes, adding that other well-established cyberlockers are trying to compete with the aggressive marketing efforts of these new players.

According to Chang, Rapidshare is determined to take another route. Instead of gaining the favor of copyright infringers (or â€˜criminalsâ€™ as Rapidshareâ€™s manager calls them), they are going to take a stand against these competitors. In addition, they will step up efforts to go after users that upload copyrighted material.

â€œRapidShare has decided not to participate in this battle and not to fight for the favor of criminals. Instead we would rather like to agitate against these activities and â€“ if possible â€“ to institute proceedings against those competitors of ours, who are intentionally supporting criminal activities,â€ Chang writes.

â€œWe are more aggressively than before terminating accounts of users who have been caught uploading copyright protected content,â€ he explains, while adding that they have also stopped the payout option that was part of the â€œrewards program.â€

This last paragraph is what led us to post the earlier article about account terminations. In follow up conversations over email and on the phone, Rapidshare remained vague about what this would actually entail. We were told that Rapidshare doesnâ€™t have any logs of the files people download, but that uploaders can indeed have their accounts terminated if they are caught.

Referring to infringing users as â€œcriminalsâ€ does also explain Bobby Changs statement to the entertainment industry that â€œOur cooperation with the German-based organization GVU is running for several years.â€ GVU is the German anti-piracy outfit that includes members such as the MPA and other local content owners. Bobby Chang does not go into detail in explaining how this cooperation has effected
RapidShares relationship to content owners in the past.

Perhaps even more interesting is Rapidshareâ€™s commitment to â€œinstitute proceedingsâ€ against competitors â€œwho are intentionally supporting criminal activities.â€ By â€œcriminal activitiesâ€ Rapidshare means uploading copyrighted material, the same activity that helped their business to flourish. What the basis of these proceedings will be is not clear from Changâ€™s writing.

In the second part of his letter Chang goes on to plug an interesting business proposal to the media executives. Instead of simply removing pages where copyrighted material can be downloaded, Rapidshare would like to redirect users to an online store where the same content can be bought legally.

â€œIf a user finds out that several attempts to download an illegal copy of a DVD are in vain, and if his several attempts to â€™stealâ€™ this DVD have just brought him to an online-store, he may finally be frustrated and willing to purchase a licensed version of this movie,â€ writes Chang, while noting that this also works for music, games and other media.

Rapidshare already has a licensing deal for promotional content with Warner Bros. and they would like to extend this to full titles of various studios. â€œCurrently, we are redirecting users to a website [link] on which they can view promotional content only. Even though this website does only offer promotional content, it does already have 250,000 users per day,â€ Chang writes.

â€œWe are willing to invest substantially into this online store and I would be glad to not just talk about RapidShare as a threat for the entertainment industry, but also about RapidShare as an interesting option to sell your products. My company does have several million users per day. I am sure, that quite a significant proportion of these users may be willing to buy your companiesâ€™ movies,â€ he concludes.

Rapidshareâ€™s plans will probably be received critically by many users, but they might be essential for the siteâ€™s survival. A Rapidshare spokesperson told TorrentFreak that copyright holders have been pushing hard for proactive filters that will prevent users from uploading copyrighted material. The shop proposal on the other hand gives the copyright holders an option to convert downloaders into customers, and this might benefit all parties in the long run.

Rapidshare was sent a draft of this article and didnâ€™t question the authenticity of the information we posted. They got back to us with the following comment:

â€œRapidShare is seeking the partnership of the content industry to generate new models that make piracy obsolete. One of these models is to redirect users to legal content on our own website, which is provided by content owners. This redirect has been in place since beginning of 2010 and well perceived by users so far. We experience that many users seek the content in the first place and are very often not aware â€“ and cannot find out â€“ if any content is pirated or not. That is why they prefer to consume it from a reliable and safe source, instead of risking to be involved in piracy. RapidShare has initiated a dialogue between the content industry and the internet industry to go forward and create new models of cooperation that eliminate the need for piracy, thus the need for pursuing users and thus protect data privacy on the internet. We believe that if users can instantly find what they are looking for at a fair price, piracy will become a problem of the past.â€

Site downtime

2010-02-14T16:50:42Z

AboveNet, a large bandwidth provider in New York, U.S.A., is currently experience a problem with a fiber optic cable. This has caused an outage which effects multiple providers in the area. Many web sites are down. AboveNet has a crew en route and expects to fix the problem at 8:30 a.m. EST (Sunday).

In these hours there are some issues with our Internet Provider, so the site, Support hub and pingers may not work. Please don't use manual pinger otherwise your hub may be marked as offline.

Pirate Bayâ€™s Ipredator VPN Opens To The Public

2010-01-20T18:56:05Z

After months of waiting, the Ipredator anonymity service from the founders of The Pirate Bay has finally opened its doors to the public. For 5 euros a month users can now hide all their Internet traffic, including torrent downloads, from third party outfits who might want to spy on their downloading habits.

In the last year, pressure from the entertainment industries on ISPs and governments to crack down on copyright infringers has steadily increased, resulting in ISPs sending out mass copyright warnings. This, of course, is coupled with the looming specter of three-strikes legislation aimed at disconnecting copyright infringers.

File-sharers on the other hand havenâ€™t been sitting still either, as many have chosen to negate these initiatives by going anonymous.

Users of BitTorrent and other file-sharing networks have increasingly turned to solutions that hide their identities from the outside world, rendering these new anti-piracy initiatives useless. The IPREDator service from the founders of The Pirate Bay opened up to the public this week, and is undoubtedly the most talked about newcomer in this business.

With a beta launch coinciding with the introduction of the controversial IPRED law in Sweden, the service promised to offer users an anonymous connection to the Internet. IPRED gave the copyright holders increased power to track down pirates, and with the launch of IPREDator the creators neutralized this new â€˜threatâ€™.

Much like many other comparable VPN services, Ipredator allows users to connect to the Internet while hiding their own IP-address. The interest in services like this is booming. In Sweden alone, an estimated 500,000 Internet subscribers are already hiding their identities online, and that number is expected to rapidly grow in the new year.

Ipredator is currently using the same platform as several other VPN franchises including Relakks, which means itâ€™s not really anything we havenâ€™t seen before. The servers are maintained and provided by Pirate Bay affiliates though, which may be more trustworthy to the average BitTorrent user than a random VPN provider.

That aside, we were told by former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde that contrary to what the legal page states, no logs of any kind are kept by Ipredator. The text that is in there is a left over from the standard template they got from the provider of the VPN platform.

And, according to Sunde, there will soon be even more advantages and added security to Ipredator.

While Ipredator owes its name to the IPRED legislation, the team behind it is also working to crush the Swedish wiretapping law (FRA) that was introduced earlier. Sunde explained in a recent writeup how they are planning to not only encrypt the connection between individual users and the VPN, but also the entire stream of outgoing data from the VPN until it has passed Swedenâ€™s borders.

This will make it practically impossible for the Government to decrypt the data and find out whatâ€™s being sent. â€œThe only thing they can do is to make it illegal to encrypt,â€ Sunde told TorrentFreak.

â€œPeople donâ€™t understand why I want to encrypt the traffic, since theyâ€™re already hidden when they connect to our system. But they must understand that the same traffic can be found unencrypted, traveling across borders again,â€ Sunde told TorrentFreak. â€œAlso, using a VPN outside of Sweden is bad for Swedes, since it will raise a suspicion flag at FRA,â€ he added.

Although these wiretap-busting plans havenâ€™t been implemented yet, Ipredator does already offer a secure VPN connection. The service guarantees that anti-piracy outfits or even your ISP will be unable to record or spy on your BitTorrent downloads. Ipredator has just opened its doors to the public for those who did make the beta and are interested in giving it a try.

Court ruling forces Mininova to end illegal torrents

2010-01-17T17:45:18Z

The Netherlands-based file-sharing website Mininova has removed all torrents that enabled users to download copyright-protected material. The move follows a ruling in a Netherlands district court three months ago ordering the firm to remove links to illegal content.

The court said that Mininova's notice and take down policy was insufficient to keep it operating within the law.

The news is the latest in an ongoing campaign against file-sharing sites.

Although Mininova has not totally shut down operation, it has now removed all torrents that would enable users to download copyright-protected material, opting instead to only host a limited 'featured content' service, which offers legal licensed files.

Tim Kuik - director of Dutch anti-piracy group Brien, said:

"We applaud the fact that Mininova now uses the BitTorrent technology for legal business. "We are not against the technology but only against the use of that technology for illegal purposes."

In a blog post, Mininova staff said the court ruling leaves "no other option than to take our platform offline, except for the content distribution service".

But they added that they were still considering an appeal against the court order.

Although Mininova ending illegal file sharing will be a small step forward for representatives of the music and film industry - who have been campaigning for years against illegal file sharing - the worlds two largest sites , isoHunt and The Pirate Bay, continue to operate.

Last month, a different Dutch court ordered The Pirate Bay to remove all links to the material of a group of Netherlands-based music and film makers.

The action, brought by Stichting Brein, was against The Pirate Bay's former spokesperson Peter Sunde, along with founders Frederik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholmmen. However, the founders dispute the ruling saying that they sold The Pirate Bay and no longer had any control over its content.

The current owner of The Pirate Bay is a Seychelles-based company called Riversella Ltd.

Crackdown on filesharing as EU adopts Telecoms Package

2010-01-17T17:45:18Z

The European Parliament has approved the controversial Telecoms Package, which means that internet users can be disconnected for illegal file-sharing if their guilt can be proved.

The new laws were scheduled to be passed months ago but had been held up by attempts by some countries to enshrine internet access as a Ã¢â‚¬Å“human rightÃ¢â‚¬Â within the regulation. That would have impeded plans by the French and UK governments to sever illegal file-sharersÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ internet connections.

Since European ministers reached a compromise this month, the law has been passed and national regulators have until May next year to implement the regulation.

Although it is the first time that the rights of internet users have been formally addressed in European law, there is still scope to disconnect illegal file-sharers in line with the Lord MandelsonÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s plans. However, the new laws ensure that no one will be "arbitrarily or immediately" cut off from the internet and that Ã¢â‚¬Å“sufficient proof [must be] provided that rules have been breachedÃ¢â‚¬Â.

Some critics have derided the plan to hear the case of anyone accused of illegal file-sharing before imposing sanctions as time consuming and unworkable.However, David Fink, a lawyer at Covington & Burling, said:

Ã¢â‚¬Å“These are important protections that will ensure that users are not cut off from the internet without due process.Ã¢â‚¬Â

Tackling illegal file-sharing via legislation has proved a divisive issue that has pitted internet companies, most notably TalkTalk, which is owned by Carphone Warehouse, against copyright holders in the music and entertainment sectors.

Filesharing has taken centre stage in the debate over the Telecoms Package, although a number of initiatives related to regulation are included in the law. Another new law will ensure that porting a mobile phone number from one operator to another takes only one day.

Under the new rules, consumers will also have to consent to the use of internet cookies, an initiative that has attracted criticism from retail companies that use the internet and has raised fears that consumers will be dissuaded from using services as they have to Ã¢â‚¬Å“opt inÃ¢â‚¬Â at every turn.

Swedes start buying music; are anti-P2P laws working?

2010-01-17T17:45:18Z

Is Sweden, the only country to have sent a member of the Pirate Party to the European Parliament, finally giving up its swashbuckling ways?
When Sweden's IPRED anti-piracy law went into effect earlier this year, Internet traffic across the country plummeted overnightÃ¢â‚¬â€a sign that P2P users, fearing exposure at last, were abandoning their existing copyright infringement tools. The Pirate Bay defendants were found guilty by a Swedish court earlier this year, and the site's ISP are now under assault by the music and movie industries.

The music business insists that the measure are working. Music's major labels say that sales of digital downloads are up 18 percent in the first nine months of 2009 in Sweden. Ludvig Werner, head of the trade group IFPI Sweden, told the UK's Guardian newspaper that it didn't matter if people still wanted to pirate; the point was, they were doing less of it.

"It's like speeding, put up cameras and people will start to ease off the gas pedal. Even if it doesn't change the attitudes, they find legal alternatives because they don't want to get caught,"

said Werner.

Dueling explanations

As with most statistics in the Copyright Wars, these are hard to evaluate. Digital music sales are up, but has copyright infringement also dropped? IFPI doesn't know. In fact, there are reasons to suspect that legal actions like IPRED aren't the only drivers of Sweden's uptick in music sales. As we reported yesterday , UK-based music label EMI has reported a worldwide revenue increase of 4.6 percent in its recorded music business through 2009 to date; surely this can't just be chalked up to tougher antipiracy laws in small countries like Sweden and South Korea?

And Swedish Internet traffic data bounced back soon after the IPRED law came into force and now exceeds the level from the beginning of 2009. Credit also has to go the music industry for licensing its music far more widely, often to innovative Scandinavian companies like Spotify and Nokia, which is offering the Comes With Music plan on selected phones.

But who knows? Perhaps IPRED and The Pirate Bay prosecution were real drivers of the change in Sweden; we've certainly seen surveys in the UK that suggest online infringers will alter their behavior once the veil of anonymity is stripped away (which was the point of IPRED). If true, the data could help prove a music industry mantra: tougher enforcement can yield results (i.e., battling the pirates is not a hopeless endeavor).
On the other hand, it seems to suggest that only minimal legal tools are needed. IPRED made it possible for rightsholders to subpoena ISPs and get subscriber names and information; The Pirate Bay case was brought under copyright law. New Internet disconnection laws, ISP filtering schemes, and similar invasive measures weren't required.

UK government crackdown

2010-01-17T17:45:18Z

The UK government has announced plans to shakeup the UK online arena with a crackdown on those convicted of illegal downloads, a move which would see their broadband limited if they continue to offend after being warned. This is an issue which has been ongoing for some time and is central to the UK music industry where allegedly billions upon billions of pounds are being lost due to illegal file sharing and music piracy.

The proposals put forward by the UK government are currently under discussion although Internet service providers in the UK are concerned about the cost of running the scheme and the overall impact on many customers who do not download illegal material. If, as the government hopes, the changes are brought in then we will see potentially broadband cuts for persistent offenders from 2011 onwards.

However, privacy campaigners and Internet user groups are looking to ratchet up the pressure on the UK government which seems to have fallen on the side of the UK music and entertainment industry, at least in the short term. Those who follow this particular situation would be well aware of the alleged links between Lord Mandelson and various leaders in the music and entertainment industry, and a potential conflict of interest. However, these allegations have been denied by Lord Mandelson and the UK government and we appear to be moving forward with these new plans.

Google's Chrome OS hits BitTorrent

2010-01-17T17:44:53Z

Chrome OS, the operating system that Google released to open source yesterday, has been compiled and posted for download on several file-sharing sites, Internet searches showed today.

The ready-to-run Chrome OS has appeared on several peer-to-peer BitTorrent tracking sites, including Mininova.org and Pirate Bay. The Gdgt Web site has also posted a free download of the Chrome OS disk image. Users must create an account with the site to access the download. The operating system, which Google bragged will be faster and more secure than rivals when it ships late next year, can be run in a virtual environment using a desktop application, such as those available from VMware or Sun Microsystems.
According to notes appended to several of the BitTorrent downloads, users compiled Chrome OS from the bits that Google publicly released as part of its move to take the operating system open source. Yesterday, Google also posted instructions on the Chromium Projects site for creating a build from the source code.

Nato's cyber defence warriors

2010-01-17T17:43:59Z

Nato officials have told the BBC their computers are under constant attack from organisations and individuals bent on trying to hack into their secrets. The attacks keep coming despite the establishment of a co-ordinated cyber defence policy with a quick-reaction cyber team on permanent standby.
The cyber defence policy was set up after a wave of cyber attacks on Nato member Estonia in 2007, and more recent attacks on Georgia - so what are they defending against and how do they do it?

Tower of Babel

Nato's operational headquarters in Mons is a low, drab three-storey building - part of a sprawling complex set in rolling farmland south of Brussels. The blue and white flag of the 26-nation alliance flutters in the cold breeze alongside the spangled banner of the EU. Inside the canteen it is like a Tower of Babel with almost every language of Europe competing to be heard above the clatter of trays and dishes.
Our escort, a German army officer in immaculate uniform, leads us down a corridor to a hushed room where 20 or so military analysts sit hunched over computers; their desert boots and camouflage fatigues strangely out of place for a windowless room in Belgium.This, explains Chris Evis, is the Incident Management Section, which he heads.

"We face the full gamut of threats. It varies from your kiddie who's just trying to gain street cred amongst his friends to say he's just defaced a Nato system to more focused targeted attacks against Nato information".

Cyber attacks are not new - websites were being hacked into and brought down during the Kosovo war 10 years ago. But when Estonia came under sustained cyber attack from Russian sympathisers in 2007, the alliance realised it needed a proper cyber defence policy and fast.
Suleyman Anil, a Turkish IT expert from the Nato Security Office is the man driving much of that policy.

"Estonia was the first time, in a large scale, [that we saw] possible involvement of state agencies; that the cyber attack can bring down a complete national service, banking, media... the other particular trait everyone is struggling to deal with... is lots of cyber espionage going on".

Mr Anil reveals that there has been more than one incidence of Nato officials being socially profiled, and then subjected to "targeted trojans".
He explains how their unseen adversaries gather as much information as possible about the individual then send them an email purporting to come from a friend or a relative.

Trojan horse

If they open the attachment then a sophisticated "worm" or "trojan" can, in theory, take over their computer, scan its files, send them on, delete them, or perhaps most damagingly, alter them without the user knowing. This sort of activity goes on every day in the commercial world but for a military organisation like Nato there are obvious risks. Chris Evis is at pains to point out that any material classified as "secret" is transmitted only internally, by secure intranet, rather than using the world wide web.
But what happens, I ask, when someone mistakenly sends secret material over the internet? The answer, it seems, is sitting in the corner of the room.
An Italian sergeant, who looks young enough to still be at school, is painstakingly scanning emails that have been automatically quarantined because they contain buzzwords like "Nato secret".
A glance over his shoulder reveals emails to and from Sarajevo, Baghdad and Kabul, evidence of Nato's newly expanded horizons. They look innocuous enough and most of the time, explains the sergeant, it is a false alarm but sometimes even quite senior officers have transgressed and they get a serious talking to about online security.

Serious threats

When it comes to cyber espionage, Nato officials refuse to say who they think is behind the attacks, in fact our escorts can hardly wait to steer us off the subject.
Even if they were certain that they were originating, say, in China or Russia, it would be very hard for them to prove, so tortuous is the trail in cyberspace. Instead, Chris Evis is happy to talk about how the threat is being tackled, explaining that they have a number of analysts who are constantly reviewing information, looking for the more serious threats.
"We have [about] 100 sensors at the moment deployed at something close to 30 different sites across the Nato countries... one of these sensors could be on the east coast of the United States, one could be in London, one could be in Iraq and a number of them could be in Afghanistan. All that information is simultaneously feeding back to us at the centre here."
So is cyber warfare the future of warfare? Chris Evis says he believes it will be a factor within any future conflict. "I think the gravest cyber threat to Nato is somebody altering the data without our knowing about it and [our] finding out too late in the action," he says.
"So when it's quiet it's probably too quiet, because there's always activity out there."

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