Author: Andy

In 2011, Dutch blog GeenStijl.nl published an article linking to leaked Playboy photos which were stored on file-hosting site FileFactory.

After filing a request with Filefactory, Playboy publisher Sanoma managed to have the photos removed from the platform. However, GeenStijl continued to find other sources for the photographs and linked to them instead. Sanoma said that this was an infringing act.

The case went to trial and was later referred to the European Court of Justice. The ECJ was asked to rule on whether the links posted by GeenStijl amounted to a ‘communication to the public’ under Article 3(1) of the EU Copyright Directive and therefore infringement.

After deliberating for months, the ECJ has just handed down its decision and it’s bad news for GeenStijl operator GS Media and others operating in a commercial environment. On the other hand, it may give a little more flexibility to the general public.

“In accordance with the directive concerned, Member States are to provide authors with the exclusive right to authorize or prohibit any communication to the public of their works,” a statement from the Court reads.

“At the same time, that directive seeks to maintain a fair balance between, on the one hand, the interests of copyright holders and related rights and, on the other, the protection of the interests and fundamental rights of users of protected objects, in particular their freedom of expression and of information, as well as the general interest.”

The Court says that when determining a ‘communication to the public’ several criteria need to be addressed, including any deliberate posting of links to protected works and whether the communication had any profit-making component.

In its ruling, the Court recognizes the importance of freedom of expression and notes the importance of hyperlinks when exchanging both opinions and information. It also accepts that determining whether a linked work is infringing could be a troublesome task.

Given the above, the Court found that knowledge of the potentially infringing status of a work plus commercial motivation play a pivotal role in determining whether a ‘communication to the public’ has taken place.

“For the purposes of the individualised assessment of the existence of a ‘communication to the public’, it is necessary, when the posting of a hyperlink to a work freely available on another website is carried out by a person who, in so doing, does not pursue a profit, to take account of the fact that that person does not know and cannot reasonably know that that work had been published on the internet without the consent of the copyright holder,” the Court’s statement reads.

“Indeed, such a person, does not, as a general rule, intervene in full knowledge of the consequences of his conduct in order to give customers access to a work illegally posted on the internet.”

The situation changes entirely when a person already has knowledge of potential infringement and is motivated by profit.

“In contrast, where it is established that such a person knew or ought to have known that the hyperlink he posted provides access to a work illegally published, for example owing to the fact that he was notified thereof by the copyright holders, the provision of that link constitutes a ‘communication to the public’,” the Court said.

When posting links for profit, the ECJ said that it expects people to carry out the “checks necessary” to ensure that work concerned has not been illegally published.

“When hyperlinks are posted for profit, it may be expected that the person who posted such a link should carry out the checks necessary to ensure that the work concerned is not illegally published. Therefore, it must be presumed that that posting has been done with the full knowledge of the protected nature of the work and of the possible lack of the copyright holder’s consent to publication on the internet.

“In such circumstances, and in so far as that presumption is not rebutted, the act of posting a clickable link to a work illegally published on the internet constitutes a ‘communication to the public’.”

The ruling is bad news for GS Media, who posted the links in the course of business even after being informed by Playboy that the content in question was infringing. The company says the decision is bad for the freedom of the press.

“The struggle for the survival of the free Internet including hyperlinks has today received a hefty blow,” a statement on Geenstijl reads.

“When commercial media companies – like GeenStijl – are no longer free and fearless to hyperlink, it becomes difficult to report on newsworthy new questions about leaking information, internal struggles, and unsecured networks within large companies.

“But we will not give up: for that press freedom we will fight on, in this case and beyond. Until then: careful when hyperlinking people, as today a minefield has been laid on the free internet.”

A landmark piracy trial in Sweden against the operators of streaming portal Swefilmer was suspended in June pending the ECJ’s decision. It appears that much will now hinge on whether the operators knew the content they linked was illegal and if a profit motive was involved.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

As the presidential election moves towards the home straight, millions of individuals and businesses in the United States are considering how the outcome might affect them.

Unsurprisingly, powerful groups in the entertainment industry are also weighing the implications and with billions at stake, who could blame them.

Of course, just like the rest of the population, neither Hollywood nor the major recording labels have a crystal ball, so in recent months their public lobbying efforts have been mindful of the possibility that either Clinton or Trump could get into power.

This week that trend continued, with the publication of a new open letter and the launch of a petition by two influential anti-piracy groups, the Copyright Alliance and CreativeFuture.

The Copyright Alliance is a true powerhouse which counts the MPAA, RIAA, Viacom, Oracle, Getty Images and many other corporations among its members. CreativeFuture is a huge coalition of some 450 companies in the film, television, music, and book publishing sectors.

In their letter addressed to “2016 Political Candidates”, the groups describe themselves as members of the creative community, who despite political differences are united in their goal of reducing piracy.

“While our political views are diverse, as creators, there are core principles on which we can all agree. And we appreciate the opportunity to share our views with our country’s current and future leaders,” the groups write.

What immediately becomes apparent in the letter are the glowing references to the Internet. With lessons learned from the SOPA debacle which was perceived by many as an attack on the world’s most important network, Copyright Alliance and CreativeFuture begin by cheerfully praising its positives.

“We embrace the internet as a powerful democratizing force for our world and for creative industries. We recognize its ability to inspire positive change and improve lives,” they write.

“In our creative industries, the internet has helped to advance creativity by removing barriers to entry for newcomers, fostering a dialogue with fans, audiences, and consumers, and providing numerous additional ways to reach them. The internet holds great potential to expand creativity and free expression.”

While one might have strongly expected a ‘but’ at this juncture, the groups are careful not to set up a clash of ideals. It’s not difficult to see that their aim is to quietly assure that the successful protection of copyrighted content does not have to come at the expense of the Internet.

“We embrace a strong copyright system that rewards creativity and promotes a healthy creative economy. The incredible cultural and economic value that the internet delivers to billions of users is based in very large part on the efforts of creative content makers whose livelihoods depend on being compensated for their efforts,” they add.

“Copyright should protect creators from those who would use the internet to undermine creativity. The internet can be a great tool for creators just as it can be a tool for science, education, health care, and many other disciplines. However, when misused, it can harm creativity and stifle freedom of expression.”

And if anyone missed the hints that Copyright Alliance and CreativeFuture are supporters of both creative content and the interests of the Internet, the groups quickly take the opportunity to underline that again. However, one gets the impression that their definition of online freedom might not be the same as that championed by Internet activists.

“Our current and future leaders recognize that a safe and secure internet benefits us all. And all parties recognize the importance of strong copyright protections in their technology policy platforms because protecting copyright and internet freedom are both critically important and complementary — they are not mutually exclusive,” they write.

“A truly free internet, like any truly free community, is one where people respect the rights of others and can engage in legitimate activities safely — and where those who do not are held accountable under law by their peers.”

Interestingly, the letter also warns 2016’s political candidates against “organizations and advocates” funded by “online platforms” that claim to be “pro-creators and pro-audience to mask their own self-serving agenda.”

These groups are not mentioned by name but the likes of EFF and Fight for the Future have been spoken of in similar terms and have appeared in negative articles published by the Copyright Alliance earlier this year.

“[The nameless groups] denigrate or block effective efforts to preserve and promote creative content, including enforcement of existing laws and voluntary industry initiatives,” Copyright Alliance and CreativeFuture warn, adding:

“The creative community is rightfully wary of any company or organization that claims to be ‘against piracy’ when their actions do not match their words.”

And of course, even if not mentioned by name, no appeal would be complete without a subtle reference to Google and/or YouTube. Trump and Clinton are left to fill in the gaps and asked to do the right thing.

“Internet platforms are making massive profits from creative contributions to the internet’s growth. It is not too much to ask that content creators should be able to share in the value they provide,” the groups write.

With the election likely to go to the wire, Copyright Alliance and CreativeFuture are keen to ensure that anti-piracy measures are seen as a universal concern, no matter where people reside on the political spectrum.

“There is no ‘left’ or ‘right’ when it comes to respecting copyright. The creative community stands united in support of a copyright system that will continue to make the United States the global leader in the creative arts and the global paradigm for free expression,” they note.

“Our copyright system is not perfect but, like democracy, it is better than the alternatives. It works. We urge our leaders to maintain America’s commitment to the right of creators to determine when and how they share their works in the global marketplace.”

In support of their open letter, Copyright Alliance and CreativeFuture have also launched a Change.org petition in an attempt to get 5,000 signatures supporting their cause.

“Whether you are a Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative or libertarian, strong and effective copyright is not a partisan issue but rather one that benefits our entire country. We ask that you stand with us by adding your name to this letter – to show political candidates that we stand united, we stand creative,” they conclude.

Open Letter to 2016 Political Candidates

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Last December, Quentin Tarantino cursed the existence of pirates after his latest movie Hateful Eight was leaked online.

While leaks are nothing new, Hateful Eight appeared online in DVD screener format well in advance of its Christmas Day cinema debut, causing a pirate feeding frenzy that continued for many weeks.

In March, the DVD and Blu-ray versions of Hateful Eight were released to the public, which went some way to competing with the copies available online. However, in the knowledge that Hateful Eight had been filmed in Ultra Panavision 70 and captured in 4K, many fans were still keen to obtain the three-hour epic in UHD.

Some nine months after its debut there has been no announcement of when Hateful Eight will be made available in 4K. However, developments over the past few days suggest that a copy has already been made available online and pirates have somehow obtained a copy.

Although it’s possible an earlier source was involved, it appears the release was first made available on a UltraHDclub, an invite-only private tracker specializing in ultra high-definition movies. From there it spread to other private sites, albeit at a fairly leisurely pace due to its 40GB+ size.

Details made available with the original release suggest that this 4K version of Hateful Eight was actually obtained from a legal source called Okko, something which is bound to irritate those U.S. fans waiting patiently for a home soil release.

Launched in 2014 and developed in partnership with LG Electronics, Okko is a VOD service that was designed to meet Hollywood strict content protection standards. The service has deals with most of the big studios and is even trusted to deliver some movies on the same day as they hit the silver screen.

But aside from the availability of Hateful Eight in 4K at all, what is both interesting and controversial here are the claims being made by the people who obtained the movie from the Okko VOD service.

As previously reported, it is already possible to capture 4K content and put it on torrent sites. However, details provided with the release (and echoed in the tracker screenshot above) suggest that the copy was somehow made after pirates obtained a .MXF content file from within a highly secure Digital Cinema Package (DCP).

TorrentFreak contacted Okko for their take on the unofficial release but at the time of publication the service had not responded to our request for comment. Given the sensitive nature of the topic, it seems unlikely that the company would have given much away anyway, so we also took the opportunity to speak with several sources familiar with pirate releases.

One, the operator of a large site, didn’t doubt that the content was out there but wasn’t prepared to accept it was obtained from a highly protected .MXF file. The other, a release group member, said that while a crack seems unlikely, no system is without weakness. “I want to believe,” he said.

We also spoke with HDEncode who posted the 4K version of Hateful Eight and provided a number of 4K/Blu-ray comparison screenshots. The site’s operator told us that the people behind the release on UltraHDclub maintain that they have indeed cracked DCP’s encryption.

Commenting on the release, Sebastian Haselbeck of Tarantino fansite Tarantino.info says that while he’s not a fan of piracy, he believes that a failure to serve the market is the real problem.

“I strongly condemn piracy and find it generally damaging, but it is a symptom, not the source, of market failure,” he told TF.

“I believe the biggest obstacle to great sales is the general bare bones treatment Tarantino’s movies usually get on home video. Quality is also usually not reference material. Fans would easily spend on the roadshow cut of Hateful Eight or the integral cut of Kill Bill. Both are not available to buy.”

Why a 4K edition of Hateful Eight hasn’t yet been made widely available is a question for the studio, but once again it appears that pirates are the first to recognize and then meet demand, however niche.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

With decades of experience and billions of software units shifted, Nintendo is one of the most enduring and popular gaming brands on the planet.

With continuous popularity of flagship character Mario and the recent revival of Pokemon as a global phenomenon, Nintendo is still making waves in 2016. In recent times, however, the company has been making gaming headlines for less popular reasons.

Just like many big technology companies, Nintendo sees its intellectual property rights as its most valuable asset. As a result, the company is cracking down on anyone using Nintendo characters without permission, from fan-made Metroid clone AM2R to Pokémon Uranium.

Most of the recent legal threats have been made by Nintendo of America attorney Brian Sniffen and before the weekend the legal hounds were at it again, this time targeting a project that by constraint was just a few hours old.

Ludum Dare (Latin “to give a game”) is a triannual game coding competition that was first held in 2002. In recent years it has become more popular after Minecraft designer Markus Persson became a semi-regular entrant. Its unique feature is that competitors are given a theme and then expected to produce a finished game in 48 to 72 hours.

One of the team entrants to Ludum Dare 36 (theme ‘Ancient Tech’) were ASMB Games (Alex McDonald, Sam Izzo, Max Cahill, Ben Porter) with their creation No Mario’s Sky, a game featuring “exploration and survival in an infinite procedurally generated universe.”

While the game’s title clearly plays on Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky, it was the Nintendo element that got ASMB in hot water with the gaming giant.

“We represent Nintendo of America Inc. (“Nintendo”) in intellectual property matters. Nintendo recently learned that content available at https://asmb.itch.io/no-marios-sky infringes copyrights owned by Nintendo. This notice is provided pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 USC § 512, and itch.io’s Terms of Service,” Sniffen wrote in a DMCA complaint sent to ASMB.

“This page provides access to downloadable files which violate itch.io’s Terms of Service and infringe Nintendo’s copyrights in its Super Mario video game franchise, including but not limited to the audiovisual work, images, and fictional character depictions….We would appreciate your expeditious removal of all infringing content.”

Faced with the wrath of Nintendo’s legal department in their inbox, ASMB responded by immediately taking the game down. Sadly that also had an effect on their standing at Ludum Dare.

“NO MARIO’S SKY IS NO MORE-IO!” the team announced. “Due to a copyright claim by Nintendo we’ve had to take the game down. As we’ve had to remove the game, we are voiding our entry into Ludum Dare. Thanks for playing, everyone!”

While it’s disappointing that the game had to be taken down, ASMB weren’t quite done. After addressing the issues highlighted by Nintendo of America, the team went back to work and removed all ‘infringing’ content from No Mario’s Sky. The end result is a new game cheekily titled DMCA’s Sky.

“Thanks everyone for playing and enjoying our little fan game,” ASMB said in a follow-up. “We would love to see an official Nintendo game in this style — a Mario Galaxy-style game in 2D within a procedurally-generated universe.”

Whether Nintendo will follow up on the request will remain to be seen but ASMB appear to be taking their little run-in with the gaming giant in their stride. Meanwhile, people are already swapping file-hosting links to the outlawed No Mario’s Sky, meaning that Nintendo has not only failed in its quest to kill the game but have also thrust it into the spotlight.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Growing up, I was one of the millions to enjoy Panini soccer stickers. Five to a pack, these collectibles would be placed in a book (at huge cost) until every page had been completed. Well, that was the theory.

In reality, everyone ended up with dozens of duplicate stickers which were traded as quickly as possible with others in the same position. This schoolyard system worked pretty well and not once did anyone consider selling their spares for cash. By 2016 hustler standards that’s pretty naive, but looking back the swapping with friends was probably the best part of the hobby.

The same kind of culture prevailed with digital files in the early 2000s, when file-sharing was still in its infancy. Whether traveling the Wild West of KaZaA or the cooler backwaters of Soulseek, content existed to be shared, not sold. Have some music tracks? Offer them. Need some software? Help yourself. The new magic with P2P over Panini was that people not only got to swap files but were able to keep the originals too.

Of course, there were always people somewhere in the system edging to make money. Sharman Networks, the people behind KaZaA, definitely wanted to make bank. As did the folks behind the more famous LimeWire . At the time these people were largely faceless and no one really cared about their profitability or even their existence. As long as the files kept flowing, of course.

Clearly, some of the mechanisms behind P2P sharing were partly commercialized even in the early days, so when Bram Cohen came along with BitTorrent and gave his creation away for free, that was a truly momentous event. Indeed, he sparked a revolution.

While not even a genius like Cohen could have foreseen the events of the next decade, his technology alongside fledgling public indexes and early private tracker scripts reignited the fires of sharing. Fueled by free software tools, quite a bit of this took place without commercially-motivated overlords taking a cut or making business decisions.

However, with the advent of ratio-based communities a new currency in the form of bandwidth was born. With these artificial restrictions in place, over the next several years sites could be observed moving in different directions, largely due to decisions made by their management.

Some trackers used ratio to form the so-called ‘pay-to-leech’ model, with some continuing to do so now more than a decade later. Others utilized the ratio model in the way it was intended, to improve tracker content libraries, delivery systems, and retention. This delighted sharing-conscious members and the most successful are still around today, held in high regard by their communities.

But whichever route those trackers took, none could escape the economics of running a site. They all cost money to run, simple, and someone had to pay for that. In some cases, staff kept sites alive. In others, users would donate to the cause. It didn’t really matter, as long as the site and the community held together. Somehow, many found a way.

However, in common with some of their public counterparts today, a number (by accident or design) became fully-fledged commercial operations. It was no longer a case of people enthusiastically taking their own files to a digital swap meet. In the main, most of the content was already there.

With content always available, more and more users were attracted to the party. And with the snowball gathering speed, size and momentum, the money-generating options for site operators began to mount up. In time, the fun hobbyist sites often became fairly lucrative roller-coasters that were both exciting and hard to get off.

In the background, however, the sharing purists were furious. Just as they had done a decade earlier, many just wanted to share files, without any commercial overtones. But thanks to the enemies of file-sharers, that was proving increasingly difficult to achieve.

With crackdowns everywhere, sites had become more complex to run. Punishments for doing so were increasing too, so the risks of running a site had to be weighed into the equation. Some siteops were happy with the quiet glory and satisfaction of serving a community. For many others, the risk was mitigated by financial reward.

In the end, keen but non-commercial file-sharers who still wanted to share had to compromise and turn a bit of a blind eye to what was happening upstairs. In that respect, there aren’t many better current and public examples than the one provided by KickassTorrents.

Like many public sites, KickassTorrents was a place where people could go to share their files, just like they had in the old days. They could take files too, even if they had none to give back, with no restrictions. No file provider would get paid and none would be subjected to the anti-sharing environment of a hardcore pay-to-leech ratio system.

Furthermore, thanks to the many volunteers working on the site – the mods, uploaders and general staffers – KAT was a great community where members helped each other for no financial gain. At times it really did seem like the old days were back again and in many ways they were, but behind the scenes the inevitable reality was taking place.

No site of such massive scale could possibly run on fresh air, so even if one dilutes KAT’s claimed advertising revenues ten-fold, large amounts of money were still being made. Indeed, more money than many people see in a lifetime. Whether completely by design or from a reluctance to reign in a runaway successful formula, KAT ultimately became a commercial success.

But no matter what sums were allegedly generated, few people seem to be surprised, much less care, following the site’s demise. After more than a decade and a half of galloping capitalism and increased financial pressures, perhaps only the naive wouldn’t expect people to make a few bucks from the digital equivalent of 1980’s Panini stickers.

For the majority of the site’s users, from those with rose-tinted spectacles to those fully aware of big site economics, the important thing was still the files. Just as they had done in the early 2000s with KaZaA, the files kept flowing on KickassTorrents to the end and no one ever paid a thing.

That someone, somewhere, apparently made a few million from providing a top class service to the masses? Nothing but a footnote.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Like many countries around the world, Russia is trying to do what it can to limit Internet piracy. Copyright holders feel that if infringement can be reigned in, the legitimate market will flourish.

In common with the United States and Europe, Russian service providers are expected to remove pirate content when asked to by rights holders. The country also has a streamlined backup system via the courts if service providers won’t comply.

Back in August, Eksmo, a publisher responsible for around 30% of all Russian books, filed a complaint with Yandex, the country’s largest search engine. Through anti-piracy outfit AZAPO, Eksmo complained that Yandex was allowing links to pirated content to appear in its search results.

There were no allegations that Yandex directly hosted any of the pirate material. Eksmo said that unauthorized digital copies of several books were hosted by users of Russia’s most popular torrent site, RuTracker, and that links to those torrents appeared in Yandex’s results.

According to a copy of the complaint obtained by Gazeta, Yandex was given 48 hours to “cease publishing any information necessary to access the forbidden resource rutracker.org.” Yandex did not remove the results.

In response, Eksmo and AZAPO chose to file a copyright complaint with the Moscow City Court. Complaints to this Court kickstart a process through which non-compliant domains can find themselves blocked by local ISPs for an initial period of 14 days before a full case is heard.

Eksmo and AZAPO hoped to set a precedent which would force search engines to remove ‘pirate’ links to RuTracker, a domain already blocked in Russia. It wasn’t to be.

According to a statement obtained by news outlet Vedomosti, the Moscow Court rejected the application for preliminary blocking measures against Yandex, a company with 57.6% of the local search market.

According to a Court spokesperson, the judge found no grounds for issuing a blocking order since Eksmo failed to show that Yandex had violated the rights of the books’ author.

One of the problems with Eksmo’s request was that when examining the evidence, the Court found that the links in Yandex’s search results failed to link to the copyrighted works in question. Ironically, it appears those links may have failed due to the fact that RuTracker is already blocked by all Russian ISPs.

In response to the decision, Yandex spokesperson Vladimir Isayev said that the complaint had only been received from the publisher last week. Furthermore, the RuTracker links referenced in the claim also appear on other search engines and websites. So, following Eksmo’s logic, any site could find itself blocked had the Court ruled in the publisher’s favor.

Finally, Isayev noted that the courts have previously recognized that Yandex is a search engine, not an information broker, and as such cannot affect the accessibility of documents stored elsewhere on the Internet.

And so the battle continues.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Every day, millions of people around the globe use file-sharing networks. Much of that sharing involves the unauthorized downloading and/or distribution of copyright material.

In response, some companies have decided to monetize the activity by tracking alleged infringers back to their Internet service providers and by a variety of methods, getting them to pay a fine.

Commonly known as copyright trolling, this business model has been deployed in the United States, Canada, Europe, and elsewhere. To date, Sweden has escaped its clutches, despite being home to The Pirate Bay and a large number of file-sharers. That is now about to change.

In a new announcement, an organization calling itself Spridningskollen (Distribution Check) says it is about to launch a new initiative to punish those who file-share. The aim: to save the industry and educate the masses.

Distribution Check says that since the start of the year, German anti-piracy outfit Excipio has been monitoring the activities of Swedish file-sharers. That data will be used to track alleged file-sharers back to their ISPs.

“One can compare it to a speed camera. In the same way that a speed camera only records those who drive too fast, only those Internet users who share copyrighted material without permission are logged,” says spokesman Gordon Odenbark.

Initially, the group says it will target between 500 and 1,000 file-sharers and each will be asked to settle for around $233 (2,000 kronor).

“At this moment, we have said that we are only asking for [$233] per film, but that amount will be increased. I can almost guarantee that we will raise the damages in the fall,” OdenBark says.

These “cheap now, expensive later” claims are classic copyright troll tactics which are designed to encourage prompt payments from alleged file-sharers. But of course, some will refuse to pay, and for those individuals the threat of legal action via local firm Gothia Law are already being dangled.

“The amount [being demanded] is lower than the Swedish courts have sentenced file-sharers to pay historically, so you can consider it as a kind of settlement,” the company says on its website. “If you pay the sum, rights holders will stop their demands and both parties can avoid a costly and time-consuming trial.”

In common with similar schemes in operation in the UK, Distribution Check are trying to promote their project as an educational exercise. They say that in the first instance there will be a YouTube piracy awareness campaign. That will be followed by the settlement demands.

“Sure, it may seem hard to tackle individual file-sharers in this way, but to get a behavioral change, it’s probably necessary. A similar initiative has been operated in Germany and Finland, and it has been proven to work,” the company says.

“Ultimately, it is about the film and television industry’s survival. Illegal file sharing of copyrighted material costs the cultural sector several million in lost revenues annually. With Distribution Check, we want to ensure that television and movie companies get paid for their work, so that they can continue to run their business.”

Users concerned about the titles involved in this dragnet should look to content offered by Scanbox Entertainment, Noble Entertainment, Atlantic and Crystalis Entertainment, who are all Distribution Check partners.

More often than not, copyright trolls have more bark than bite, so their threats should be taken seriously but with a decent pinch of salt. In the meantime, customers of ISP Bahnhof can probably sleep more soundly than most. The ISP certainly won’t be handing over identities to trolls without a fight.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

To legally watch broadcast television in the UK, viewers need to buy a TV license. Currently, one of those costs £145.50 per year but there are signs that the numbers of those investing in one have been dwindling.

Aside from the usual license dodgers, some people have legally chosen not to buy a TV license due to increasing volumes of BBC programming being made available on its iPlayer streaming service.

The iPlayer is split into two types of service – live TV and catchup. People viewing live TV, BBC1 for example, have always needed a TV license. However, those watching only catchup TV have been able to do so without parting with £145. This morning all of that changed.

“The law changed on 1 September 2016,” says a notice posted today to the UK’s official TV Licensing site.

“You must be covered by a TV Licence to download or watch BBC programmes on iPlayer – live, catch up or on demand. This applies to any device and provider you use. Don’t forget, you still need a TV Licence to watch or record programmes on any channel as they are being shown on TV or live on an online TV service.”

With the so-called “iPlayer loophole” closed from a legal perspective, eyes are now turning to how this can possibly be enforced. To do so properly, the BBC could provide license payers with a password and username to log into the service. Instead, however, the BBC has chosen to maintain its trust-based service, shown in the image below.

Simply clicking “I have a TV License. Watch now” is all that’s required to access the service and it’s expected that at least hundreds of thousands will do so without having an appropriate license. So what enforcement options does the BBC and the UK’s TV Licensing body have?

“We know the vast majority of people are law abiding and would anticipate those who need a licence for the first time will buy one,” a TV Licensing spokesperson said today, adding:

“We have a range of enforcement techniques which we will use and these have already allowed us to prosecute people who watch on a range of devices, not just TVs.”

Just as they have been for decades, TV Licensing are deliberately vague about the options available to them, but one thing they won’t be doing is spying on the traffic flying around people’s home wifi networks. That rumor began to circulate earlier this month but the reporting was both sensational and inaccurate. That’s not to say there aren’t options available though.

In ordinary circumstances, anyone who connects to the iPlayer service does so via an IP address allocated to them by their ISP. At this point, the BBC often has a clear idea of which ISPs are being used and the rough geographic location of the IP addresses accessing their service. Useful perhaps, but not particularly so.

Even if your IP address is static (doesn’t change) and you do (or don’t) have a license, TV Licensing and/or the BBC have no easy way of matching that IP address to a TV License payer. Indeed, the IP address they know accessed their service could belong to almost anyone.

Only complicating matters is that a TV license covers an entire household and all of the people in it, regardless of what device they’re using to access the service. Indeed, many IP addresses could be covered under one license. Some of those IP addresses, used by mobile phones for example, could be in an entirely different geographic location.

These variables and numerous others mean that TV Licensing would have huge difficulty trying to use Internet technology to track down unlicensed iPlayer users in the same way that copyright holders might track down BitTorrent pirates.

While the latter knows for sure that no one has permission to be sharing files, the former has no idea whether there is a licensed person behind any IP address. On that basis, getting a court to force ISPs to hand over details would be unlikely, if not impossible. Even if that did happen, the chances of the person having a license or some other mitigating circumstance would be extremely high indeed.

But of perhaps more importance are the chances of TV Licensing and the BBC even trying. By their own estimations around 94% of households have a valid TV license, which means that around the same percentage of UK IP addresses accessing iPlayer are doing so legally. That is not a particularly good starting point for weeding out pirates.

But for those who are truly cautious (or simply using one anyway), accessing the iPlayer from a VPN service is also a possibility. In tests carried out this morning, a properly licensed TF tester accessed iPlayer from three separate VPN services without any issues whatsoever.

Not only did UK-based IP addresses work, but also overseas one too, meaning that foreign users who aren’t eligible to buy a license can also gain access to the service. Indeed, properly licensed UK viewers can also view from a foreign IP address which might initially appear unlicensed. It’s a minefield.

So in conclusion, it seems unlikely that the BBC or TV Licensing will be enforcing illegal use of its iPlayer service in any different manner than it already does for conventional TV.

All households without a license will be gathered into a database and presumed to be TV license dodgers. They will receive letters in the post warning them that not having a license is illegal. However, unless they get caught in the act of viewing, there’s little that can be done to stop them. TV Licensing has no power of entry.

Finally, catchup services offered by other companies other than the BBC aren’t covered, so people can watch ITV Player, 4OD, Demand 5 and any other service such as Netflix without needing any license. That being said, a TV license is just £3 per week and is hardly going to break the bank.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

Last month, researchers at IT security company ESET reported on a new type of OS X malware. Called OSX/Keydnap, the malicious software was designed to steal the content of OS X’s keychain while inserting a backdoor.

In a detailed blog post on the topic, ESET said that it was unclear how machines became infected with OSX/Keydnap but speculated that it might be through attack vectors such as spam, downloads from untrusted websites, “or something else”. Other things were certain, however.

“What we know is that a downloader component is distributed in a .zip file. The archive file contains a Mach-O executable file with an extension that looks benign, such as .txt or .jpg. However, the file extension actually contains a space character at the end, which means double-clicking the file in Finder will launch it in Terminal and not Preview or TextEdit,” the researchers wrote.

Now, several weeks later, it now transpires that some BitTorrent users have been exposed to OSX/Keydnap. While some might presume that could have taken place through a suspect download from an infected torrent (also possible), this particular attack actually took place from a trusted source.

ESET reports that a recompiled version of the open source BitTorrent client Transmission was offered for download on the software’s official website. Somehow, that software had already become infected with OSX/Keydnap. Once informed, the Transmission team were quick to act.

“Literally minutes after being notified by ESET, the Transmission team removed the malicious file from their web server and launched an investigation to identify how this happened,” the researchers explain.

“According to the signature, the application bundle was signed on August 28th, 2016, but it seems to have been distributed only the next day.”

Following an investigation by the Transmission team, we now know how the infected version came to be offered to the public and for how long. It all began with some kind of intrusion by an as-yet-unamed attacker.

“It appears that on or about August 28, 2016, unauthorized access was gained to our website server,” the team said in a statement.

“The official Mac version of Transmission 2.92 was replaced with an unauthorized version that contained the OSX/Keydnap malware. The infected file was available for download somewhere between a few hours and less than a day.”

The team says that they infected file was removed from the server immediately upon its discovery, potentially just a few hours after it was placed there. While any period is too long, the length of time the download was made available to the public should help to limit the impact of the malware.

For anyone concerned that they still might have been infected during that period, ESET offers the following advice to check for infection.

“We advise anyone who downloaded Transmission v2.92 between August 28th and August 29th, 2016, inclusively, to verify if their system is compromised by testing the presence of any of the following file or directory,” the company writes.

“If any of them exists, it means the malicious Transmission application was executed and that Keydnap is most likely running. Also note that the malicious disk image was named Transmission2.92.dmg while the legitimate one is Transmission-2.92.dmg (notice the hyphen).”

The Transmission team has also published a detailed guide for anyone concerned about infection. They’re also taking additional steps to limit the chances of this happening again.

“To help prevent future incidents, we have migrated the website and all binary files from our current servers to GitHub. Other services, which are currently unavailable, will be migrated to new servers in the coming days,” the team says.

“As an added precaution, we will be hosting the binaries and the website (including checksums) in two separate repositories.”

Uninfected versions of Transmission can be downloaded here. Versions for operating systems other than OS X are not affected.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

After years of music only being made available on CD or permanent digital download, streaming services are now all the rage.

Platforms such as Spotify, Pandora and Deezer are particularly well-known in the market today but relative new-comer TIDAL has also been making waves. The platform, launched by artists including Jay Z, Kanye West, Beyonce and Madonna, is perhaps best known for its exclusives.

TIDAL comes in two flavors – TIDAL Premium (lossy quality) and TIDAL HiFi, a lossless CD quality service for the audio connoisseur. In ordinary circumstances both of these services are streaming only, but thanks to a coding upstart from Germany, users of the service can now download music from TIDAL to keep.

A recent high school leaver, Lordmau5 previously created a tool for downloading music from Spotify. He’s been coding for six years already, starting out with Visual Basic and moving onto Java and lots of Minecraft modding.

Lordmau5 informs TorrentFreak that Spotify later improved its security so after being prompted by others he decided to see if downloads from TIDAL were a possibility.

“I recently looked into some potential APIs and found out that it’s super simple to get the stream-/offline-URL for the tracks [from TIDAL] and… well… that’s when the coding began,” he says.

The end result is TiDown, a tool that allows users to quickly download music from TIDAL in lossy or lossless formats. It’s a command line tool but comes with all necessary instructions.

Lordmau5 says that a few other streaming downloaders are available but these tend to require the user to listen to every track all the way through, a somewhat laborious task. TiDown is different, he says.

“This is an actual downloader – you are logging into TIDAL through the tool and you get the direct ‘stream-URLs’ that can then be downloaded,” Lordmau5 explains.

Over the past few days in advance of TiDown’s release, Lordmau5 has been having a bit of a laugh at the expense of people who didn’t believe he had created a proper working downloader.

To support his trolling he created the most ancient-looking website possible alongside a deliberately trashy ‘promo’ video.

Of course, tools like TiDown tend not to last very long once they’re discovered. So will TIDAL stop TiDown?

“I assume so,” Lordmau5 says. “I really hope the tool will work for around a month – since that’s the free trial for TIDAL.”

TiDown’s page on Github

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.