Safe House is the most downloaded movie this week.

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

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Microsoft is in good company also.

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

Source: Busted: Microsoft Harbors BitTorrent Pirates

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

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

This is the Scene

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—————————-

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

The campaign page and accompanying video are available here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The report can be downloaded here (pdf)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warner Brothers: Wrath of the Titans

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

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

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

IMDb

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

Hulu, Crackle

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

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

Other news and information sites

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: Copyright Holders Punish Themselves With Crazy DMCA Takedowns

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: FilesTube Tops Google Copyright Takedown List

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: BitTorrent Traffic Booms Due to “Licensing Challenges”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: Italian Court Orders All ISPs To Block KickAssTorrents

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: Rickroll Meme Destroyed By Copyright Takedown