Month: June 2019

The One Netbook One Mix 3 Yoga is the smallest laptop I’ve ever used with a keyboard that’s comfortable enough to let me type at around 80 words per minute. Measuring about 8″ x 5.1″ x 0.6″ and weighing about 1.5 pounds, the little computer with an 8.4 inch display is small enough to slide […]

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Video streaming is more popular than ever. This is true for the YouTubes and Netflixes of this world, but also for pirate sites.

The influx of dedicated pirate streaming sites has triggered a cat and mouse game. Pirate sites are constantly trying to find stable hosting platforms, while rightsholders, Hollywood included, work hard to take videos down. 

These takedowns can be fairly effective. Most hosting platforms, even those frequently used by shady sites, accept takedown DMCA requests. As a result, the streaming portals often have to replace their videos, which can be quite a frustrating experience. 

This is also what Bader, the operator of the popular streaming portal Fushaar.com, noticed. The Kuwaiti entrepreneur operates several streaming sites which are predominantly popular in Arabic speaking countries. Fushaar, for example, is the 38th most visited website in Saudi Arabia.

Faced with a lack of stable ‘takedown resistant’ hosting providers to stream videos from, Bader decided to start one of his own, GO Unlimited.

“When I launched GO Unlimited in January 2016, I planned to host videos from my own websites, so it was a private video host. At the time my own websites were more than enough to bring in a lot of income for GO Unlimited,” Bader tells TorrentFreak. 

When this went well for a few months, Go Unlimited opened up to others. That started late 2016 when the now-defunct GoMovies.to joined. A major addition, as that was the most popular pirate streaming site on the web at the time. 

This also brought the video hosting platform to the attention of major copyright holders, which started to complain.

“When GoMovies.to joined, the journey started. The DMCA requests became more aggressive and more serious, so we started to use our own techniques to hide the original source of the video, so rightsholders didn’t have any resources to report,” Bader says. 

While the operator of Go Unlimited doesn’t go into detail, the site effectively hides where the videos are hosted. Because they are not residing on the website’s own domain name, the site ignores DMCA takedowns and similar notices. 

That didn’t stop rightsholders from submitting requests via escalating emails with titles such as URGENTLY, LAST WARNING, and LEGAL ACTIONS AHEAD, which kept pouring in. From then on, these were ignored though.

“Thanks to our techniques, by hiding the original source of the videos and misleading the networks providers, we were able to ignore the DMCA takedown requests for GoMovies,” Bader says. 

While rightsholders, including Hollywood’s MPAA, will disagree, the site’s operator believes that he’s not doing anything wrong here.

“We’re a licensed company in Kuwait and we’re a 100% legal service since we host nothing illegal at our main domain, nor do transfer copyrighted materials through our public services,” Bader says. 

For the same reason, the operator also believes that the domain name is safe. None of the hosted videos are directly hosted on the Gounlimited.to domain, so there’s nothing to complain about, the argument goes.

Upon closer inspection, it appears that Go Unlimited does disable videos for public viewing on its site on some occasions. However, third-party embeds of the same videos still work. This means that the uploaders can still use them on their own sites.

Whether the actual videos are stored on or viewed from the official domain or not, rightsholders will point out that under most copyright laws, the site has an obligation to remove them.

Bader disagrees, however, and is not worried about any legal pressure or consequences. While he has had to make some adjustments along the way to keep network providers happy, he hasn’t run into any trouble personally.

“I am not afraid of any pressure, I use my personal credit cards to buy the resources and I’ve provided the network providers with my legal documents many times,” Bader says. 

One of the most significant setbacks has been Cloudflare’s recent decision to terminate the site’s account. The US-based CDN provider took this decision following a violation of its terms.

This is similar to what happened with other hosting platforms, such as Rapidvideo, which was thrown out for caching a disproportionate amount of non-HTML files. Neither Rapidvideo nor Go Unlimited used Cloudflare to cache video, however.

While Cloudflare didn’t mention copyright as the reason in this case either, Go Unlimited’s operator believes that it certainly played a role. 

“Our usage graph at CloudFlare shows less usage than websites with the same size who haven’t faced any problems so far and we didn’t host any media at their platform or violated their terms in any way,” Bader says.

“If it was a matter of resources, why didn’t they contact me first? Or asked me to upgrade my plan?”

While Go Unlimited suffered a few hours of downtime due to the suspension, the site swiftly returned, and since then it’s been business as usual.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

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Zwei Bundesstaaten in Myanmar sind seit mehr als einer Woche offline, nun machen die USA Druck: Das Außenministerium will, dass die Bürger sofort wieder Zugang zum Netz erhalten. (Zensur, Internet)

Casualgamer dürfen auch zugreifen, Indiegames sind willkommen - aber primär will Sony die Playstation 5 laut einem Medienbericht für Hardcorespieler mit einem Faible für die grafisch aufwendigen Blockbuster der großen Hersteller vermarkten. (Playstation, Microsoft)

Anyone involved in the piracy ecosystem could stake claim to being ‘in the scene’ but for those with a discerning interest in pirate matters, terminology is all important.

After decades of existence, The Scene has attained mythical status among pirates. It’s not a site, a place, a person, or a group. ‘The Scene’ is all of these things, combined in a virtual world to which few people ever gain access.

In basic terms, The Scene is a collection of both loose and tight-knit individuals and groups, using Internet networks as meeting places and storage vessels, in order to quickly leak as much pirated content as possible. From movies, TV shows and music, to software, eBooks and beyond. Almost anything digital is fair game for piracy at the most elite level.

These people – “Sceners” – are as protective of ‘their’ content as they are meticulous of their privacy but that doesn’t stop huge volumes of ‘their’ material leaking out onto the wider Internet. And occasionally – very occasionally – one of their members breaking ranks to tell people about it.

TorrentFreak recently made contact with one such individual who indicated a willingness to pull back the veil. However, verifying that ‘Sceners’ are who they say they are is inherently difficult. In part, we tackled this problem by agreeing for a pre-determined character string to be planted inside a Scene release.

With a fairly quick turnaround and as promised, the agreed characters appeared in a specific release. That the release had been made was confirmed by the standard accompanying text-based NFO file, which collectively are both widely and publicly available.

In respect of the group’s identity, we were asked to say that it has been active since 2018, but nothing more. We can confirm, however, that it already has dozens of releases thus far in 2019.

Our contact, who we will call “Source”, also claims to work with groups involved with so-called WEB releases, such as video content obtained and decrypted using sources including Netflix and Prime Video.

For security reasons, he wasn’t prepared to prove membership of that niche in the same fashion. However, the information he provided on those activities (to be covered in an upcoming part 2 of this article) is very interesting indeed. But first, an introduction to the basics, for those unfamiliar with how The Scene operates.

Basics of ‘The Scene’ – “Source’s” summary (in his own words)

• Topsites: Top-secret, highly protected FTP servers storing up to hundreds or thousands of terabytes of copyrighted material. Users have to be authorized to the topsite by pre-existing members, and the users can only connect from specific IP-ranges.
• Topsites usually always have an IRC channel where they announce the releases made on the specific topsite, alongside other things such as newly traded releases, requests and chat. These IRC chatrooms are encrypted using encryption tools on top of SSL.
• Topsites can either be home hosted or rented. Rented sites are avoided by members of The Scene who are higher up in the food chain, since those are generally riskier due to being located at hosting companies’ datacenters. Users of a topsite are usually one of the following:
  • Traders / Racers
  • Release Groups (Affiliates)
  • Site Operator: User who owns or administrates a topsite
• Release Groups (Affiliates): A single or group of users, who work together to download/rip, prepare, pack and pre a release. These groups usually compete against each other to get a release out as fast as possible, beating other groups.
• Traders / Racers: A user who moves releases between topsites. For example: As soon as the group -XYZ releases an MP3 album on topsite -ASD, multiple traders instantly grab the new release and transfer it to their other topsites. When the release lands on the other topsites, traders there start sharing it further and further until every single topsite has the release. In some cases it only takes minutes for every single topsite to have the release in question.

Becoming a member of The Scene

Despite “Source’s” own group being relatively new, he says his history with The Scene dates back three years. Intrigued at the possibility of becoming a member but with no prior experience, he contacted a Scene group using an email address inside an NFO, offering his coding skills.

“I was able to convince the group to slowly adopt me into The Scene by providing them scripts and tools to make their job easier and faster, alongside other programming related tasks. The thing with Scene groups is that they don’t trust outsiders,” he explains.

Given that not granting access to the wrong people is fundamental to the security of The Scene, we asked how this “vetting” took place. “Source” explained that it was conducted over a period of time (around four months), with a particular Scene group carrying out its own investigations to ensure he wasn’t lying about himself or his abilities.

“The groups who vet new members also often try their best to dox the recruit, to make sure that the user is secure. If you’re able to be doxed (based on the info you give, your IP-addresses, anything really) you will lose your chances to join. The group won’t actually do anything with your personal info,” he adds, somewhat reassuringly.

Once the group was satisfied with his credentials, “Source” gained access to his very first topsite, which he describes as small and tight-knit. Topsites often use IRC (Internet Relay Chat) for communications so from there it was a matter of being patient while simultaneously attempting to gain the trust of others in the channel.

“Most Sceners are very cautious of new users, even after being vetted in, due to the risk of a user still being insecure, an undercover officer or generally unwanted in terms of behavior. Once you’ve been idling in the chats and such for months, you slowly start gaining some basic recognition and trust,” he says.

Branching out

Once he’d gained access via the first topsite, “Source” says he decided to branch out on his own by creating his own Scene group and gathering content to release. From there he communicated with other users on the topsite in an effort to gain access to additional topsites as an affiliate.

As mentioned earlier, his own releases via his own group (the name of which we aren’t disclosing here) number in the dozens over the past several months alone. They are listed on publicly available ‘pre-databases‘ which archive information and NFO files which provide information related to Scene releases.

However, his own group isn’t the only string to the Source bow. Of particular interest is his involvement with so-called WEB releases, i.e pirate releases of originally protected video content obtained from platforms like Netflix and Prime Video.

“Content for WEB releases are obtained by downloading the source content. Whenever you stream a video online, you are downloading chunks of a video file to your computer. Sceners simply save that content and attempt to decrypt it for non-DRM playback later,” Source explains.

“Streams from these sites are protected by DRM. The most common, and hard to crack DRM is called Widevine. The way the Scene handles WEB-releases is by using specialized tools coded by The Scene, for The Scene.”

This is a particularly sensitive area, not least since Source says he’s acted as a programmer for multiple Scene groups making these releases. He’s understandably cautious so until next week (when we’ll continue with more detail specifically about WEB content) he leaves an early cautionary note for anyone considering joining The Scene.

“You can become Sceners with friends, but not friends with Sceners,” he concludes.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Eine Bildrate von 90 fps und eine Gesamtauflösung von 2.880 x 1.700 Pixeln: HTC hat weitere Informationen über sein VR-Headset Vive Cosmos veröffentlicht, das vermutlich im Herbst 2019 mit Gamern als primärer Zielgruppe erscheinen soll. (VR, Headset)

Nach den Gesprächen zwischen US-Präsident Donald Trump und Chinas Staatschef Xi Jinping darf Huawei eigentlich auf Lieferungen von Chips und anderer Technik aus den USA hoffen. Nun sind allerdings die oppositionellen Demokraten gegen Zugeständnisse an Huawei. (Huawei, Donald Trump)

Online advertising can be quite a nuisance. Flashy and noisy banners, or intrusive pop-ups, are a thorn in the side of many Internet users.

These type of ads are particularly popular on pirate sites. Many users tackle this by installing an ad-blocker. People who don’t, often have to navigate through a maze of fake download buttons and other misleading ads.

Increasingly, Google is trying to hide such ads from the public. Not just on pirate sites, but everywhere they pop up. The company, which derives most of its income from adverts, is generally not a fan of ad-blocking. However, it does employ various blocking initiatives that target third-party advertisers.

Two years ago the company announced that its Chrome browser would start to automatically block ads that don’t adhere to the  Better Ads Standards, for example. This was implemented early last year in several locations, including the US and Europe.

In a separate effort, Google has also started to banish abusive experiences. In Chrome its begun warning users about various deceptive practices, such as fake download and play buttons, while blocking unwanted redirects which are prevalent on some pirate streaming sites.

This wasn’t enough though. Last December, Google upped the ante when it decided to block all ads on a curated selection of sites with persistent abusive experiences. This includes the aforementioned fake download buttons, but also ads that promote or link to unwanted software.

This is a big step, as sites that have all ads blocked will certainly notice a significant dip in revenue. Thus far, however, little was known about what sites are targeted by Google, or how many there are. That changed recently. 

The latest release of the Vivaldi browser, which is based on Chrome, also implemented this blocklist. This was announced in a blog post by its CEO  Jon von Tetzchner.

“We’ve improved security by blocking advertisements on sites with abusive ad practices,” he writes. “We want you to be safe while on the web, and worry less about who’s abusing you with dangerous ads.”

Google’s list of abusive sites is available through an API, but not accessible to the public. However, Vivaldi has access to it and maintains a copy on its servers, as highlighted by Techdows which highlighted it in a recent report.

We should stress that this list of “abusive” sites is separate from the list of sites that violate the “better ads” standard, which Chrome’s built-in ad-blocker uses.

A quick review of the list reveals that it’s dominated by pirate and porn sites. At the time of writing, there are a total of 7,059 sites on the list including hundreds of pirate sites such as thepiratebay.rocks, eztvtorrent.net, filmytorrents.com, gostream.nu, songsmp3.org, and watchonlinemovies.net.

The targeted pirate sites are mostly smaller proxy sites or copycats, often designed to generate revenue. Interestingly, there are also several Blogspot sites on the list, such as the pirate release blog 4howcracked.blogspot.com.  Blogspot is, of course, a blogging platform maintained by Google.

In addition, we noticed that many domains are no longer operational, such as tehmoviez.download, and various others redirect to new URLs, as 0123movies.io does. 

When we first saw the list the relatively popular torrent site TorrentDownloads.me was listed as an ‘abusive’ site as well. The operator confirmed this and told TorrentFreak that he noticed a decline in revenue when that happened.

“Revenue dropped a few months ago when they put us on the abusive list. That’s why we are thinking to move our domain to new TLDs. I will also send a request for Google to review the site again and hope they will unblock it now,” the operator said. 

Apparently, this worked, as the site was unlisted a few hours later. No surprise perhaps, as the site doesn’t display any ads at the moment, so we must wait and see if this holds when the ads are put back.

Another site owner, who prefers to remain anonymous, informed TorrentFreak that his site was listed previously, but that the issue was resolved after he removed what Google flagged as ‘abusive’ code.

With billions of sites on the Internet and just a few thousand on this list of abusive sites, the impact of this measure is relatively minimal. And even on sites that are listed, some ads are still coming through, such as on the adult site 007zeed.com and pirate site Stream-Island.su. 

While the measure may not be perfect, Google sees it as an attempt to keep the web safe. While that’s an honorable motive, there may be a self-serving element to it as well. 

As said before, Google doesn’t want people to install ad-blockers. So, if its own browser blocks flashy ads on sites by default and bans ads on abusive sites completely, fewer people may see the need for a separate ad-blocker.

As a result, Google’s revenues increase. 

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.