Author: Andy

“What if you had an unlimited access to the LARGEST ONLINE MOVIE LIBRARY EVER? A community based library, where you could watch any movie online. A library where you could swap films with contributors all over the world and discover an infinite number of stories.

This is the revolutionary idea behind MovieSwap,” the service’s Kickstarter teased last month. The proposition did indeed sound attractive and how it would be achieved somewhat intriguing.

The team behind MovieSwap said they would take the idea of swapping a physical DVD with friends to its Internet-powered conclusion. After collecting millions of genuine DVDs from all over the world, ripping them and storing them in the cloud, the service would allow members to play them on any device, anywhere.

MovieSwap?

“Then, just like you can legally lend, swap, or offer a DVD to a friend, MovieSwap works in the same way, but on a much larger scale thanks to its remote playback technology,” the team said.

MovieSwap’s Kickstarter began with a modest target of just 37,000 euros, a target that was easily surpassed with more than 87,000 euros in the pot by the time the fundraiser ended. Now, however, the dream is over.

“The MovieSwap campaign almost reached its end. However, despite its incredible success, we, unfortunately, need to announce that we have made the difficult decision to cancel it,” backers were told this afternoon.

According to the MovieSwap team the project netted almost 5,000 supporters, which places it in the top 400 of almost 100,000 Kickstarter campaigns. But despite raising more than enough money, 4,829 backers simply wasn’t enough. Behind the scenes it appears there was an undisclosed 10,000 backer threshold, under which other investors would decline to finance the project.

“Our investors were expecting more, and we cannot launch MovieSwap without their full support, despite your mobilization. To start this crazy adventure and launch MovieSwap globally, we need to invest a few millions,” the team say.

“Under the symbolic 10,000 backers barrier, our investors consider it would be too risky to bet on our project. Without funding, we cannot guarantee MovieSwap will be available in the expected time. That’s why we prefer canceling our project and have your money refunded.”

The news has enjoyed a mixed reception among those who backed the Kickstarter.

“I’m upset. I would have tried to garner more support if you had a magic number. Hiding that information from your Kickstarter supporters is just bad form,” one said.

“A huge disappointment,” said another. “I imagine that this decision was carefully considered and not made with a light heart. Know that we will be there to support you and provide investors the necessary proof of our passion!”

What is slightly surprising is that just a week ago TorrentFreak was discussing the future of the project with the MovieSwap team after it had reached its funding target. There was no mention whatsoever of any 10,000 backer limit. We did, however, discuss the legality of the service.

In our original article I referred to the project as brilliantly innovative, but I doubted that Hollywood would allow MovieSwap to thrive. Hollywood has a history of hostility towards third-parties wading into ‘their’ market without licensing discussions and I wondered how MovieSwap would fare.

To that end I asked some pretty probing questions, all of which centered on how MovieSwap would be able to operate legally in several key market areas. A response to that wasn’t forthcoming and then came today’s news.

“Honestly, we’re pretty disappointed, as the campaign began very well, and all our team was deeply involved in the project,” MovieSwap CEO Cyril Barthet informs TorrentFreak.

“But as everyone knows, such projects need a substantial investment to get off the ground and deploy worldwide. The level we reached did not convince our current round enough – very ambitious and risky model indeed.”

But despite the setbacks and risks, the team remains optimistic.

“As Bruce Wayne’s father said: ‘Why do we fall ? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up’,” Barthet says.

“It’s quite the same for lean start-ups. So, as we already run a disc-to-digital and streaming platform in France (‘Vodkaster‘), we will focus on it with a step-by-step approach to make it grow locally then globally,” he concludes.

So at least for now it appears that MovieSwap won’t see the light of day, nor will we see Hollywood’s response to it. That’s a shame, but not even millions of dollars would be enough to pacify the studios if the service had truly delivered on its promises. And they were pretty exciting.

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

After many years of litigation aimed at forcing the world’s largest pirate sites to their knees, the situation on the ground hasn’t changed very much for Hollywood.

Despite having many important legal wins under their belts, almost every single movie is available for immediate download within a few mouse clicks. In fact in some respects the position today is much worse than it was five or even ten years ago.

But while the sites themselves continue largely as before, progress is being made with other players in the Internet ecosystem, a fact recognized by MPA Europe president Stan McCoy as he addressed colleagues in France last week.

“Protecting creativity takes commitment from a whole ecosystem of people and organizations, from theater owners and operators, to technology companies and online service providers, to retailers both large and small, to Internet intermediaries, to law enforcement authorities,” he said.

While relationships with Hollywood are somewhat fragile, Google has indeed made many gestures towards the entertainment industries by helping to make copyright-infringing content harder to find. Payment processors are also doing their part, with Visa, MasterCard and PayPal all trying to stop pirate operations from using their services.

Nevertheless, the overarching message is that Google can always do more and indeed isn’t doing enough. One only has to look at the war of words taking place over the recent Copyright Office DMCA submission process to see that the battle is far from over and more blood is yet to be spilled.

But McCoy appears optimistic and notes that those engaged indirectly in the piracy ecosystem are beginning to come round to Hollywood’s way of thinking that they must together share responsibility to solve the problem.

“I put it to the audience that we may have come to a turning point in our fight against piracy, a point where intermediaries begin to understand that the creative industry does not seek to shy away from its duties and responsibilities – and it really has not – but that instead all players in the ecosystem, which of course includes not only access providers, but also search engines and payment processors amongst others – have a role to play,” said.

If that is the case then Hollywood has probably come a long way. It certainly isn’t going to solve this problem on its own and having powerful allies on board will certainly help its cause. The emphasis these days is indeed on voluntary cooperation such as warning notices schemes but it’s unclear how much further ISPs are prepared to go and whether the notices even have much effect.

But of course one shouldn’t forget the consumers so it’s no surprise that McCoy had something to say about the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) study published last week which found that 38% of young people see nothing morally wrong in piracy.

“What is more staggering is that nearly one in four believed that they were doing nothing wrong in accessing digital content from illegal sources for personal use,” McCoy said.

“Clearly it is important that young people understand that making a film, writing a book or recording a song, the amount of time, effort and investment is more than a passion – it is also someone’s livelihood. Let’s remember that 7 million people work in the creative industry in Europe.”

But what that very same survey also found is that the number one reason (58%) for young people to stop using illegal sources would be the availability of affordable content from legal sources. The MPAA is campaigning heavily at the moment claiming it is doing just that, but there are also clear signs that the EU’s plans to outlaw geo-blocking and open up content EU-wide aren’t sitting well with the studios.

In a posting to his LinkedIn page, McCoy likens Europeans’ distrust of genetically modified food to the EU’s plan to tweak copyright law.

“Many Europeans are skeptical of genetic modification when it comes to foods. Should they also be skeptical of genetic modification of … copyright laws?” he asks.

“With its efforts to institute the Digital Single Market and the recent Proposal for a Regulation on Portability, the European Commission seems intent on tinkering with the DNA of the current copyright law. This could have uncertain results for the 7 million people in Europe’s core creative industries, whose livelihoods depend on the copyright system.”

Pointing to a study financed by the EU Commission itself, McCoy suggests there is no need to outlaw geo-blocking, since all but 10% of people are available to find everything they want online.

“The European Commission should rigorously apply its own better regulation guidelines to all copyright proposals, including ensuring that they are backed by strong evidence,” he adds.

“In cases where the evidence isn’t there, then maybe we should stay away from genetically modified rights … and stick with organic.”

Needless to say, not everyone agrees with his stance.

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

Here at TF we generally believe that private torrent site politics are something best kept out of.

Not only do most private trackers have their own community dramas that few outsiders are interested in, but it’s also almost impossible to get to the truth when even important events are underway.

Every now and again, however, something ridiculous raises its head. Something so absurd that it pisses off everyone who believes in the spirit of sharing, inside and outside the gated community. Ladies and gentlemen – welcome to the bizarre world of Bitsoup.

Bitsoup is a long-standing private torrent site that operates a ratio system like most others in its niche. After downloading, Bitsoup users are expected to upload content to other users of the site or face their accounts being closed.

Those who struggle to maintain their ratio can fix the problem by
making a cash donation. In private tracker circles this is pretty common fare and this delicate issue (sometimes called “pay to leech”) is handled better by some sites than others. Bitsoup does not handle it well, not by a long shot.

For some time now there has been a feeling among Bitsoup’s members that they are being used as cash cows. Without going into too many details there have been accusations, for example, that competitions which effectively cost money to enter have had winners that don’t even exist – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

But that fades into insignificance when one looks at the latest ploy by the site to extract cash ‘donations’ from its users. It’s called ‘Lights Out’ and it makes most DRM seem pleasurable in comparison.

The way it works is pretty simple. Whenever the site likes, users are arbitrarily stopped from accessing the tracker for an unspecified amount of time unless they ‘donate’ money. The system is marketed as a great solution for keeping the site online but in reality it’s really grinding gears.

“Welcome to Lights-Out! A new dynamic program to ensure site funding by the masses for the ability to stay online for all,” non-paying users of the site were recently informed.

“Lights-Out will only run when needed, in the place of having to beg our members for donations. All restrictive periods will be different and expected to last just as dynamically as the need to use the program itself.”

While some shareware/demo programs might introduce a 30 second wait for non-paying users to encourage a contribution, the use of the word “dynamic” in this instance could easily be replaced with unpredictable, random or simply annoying.

“While we can not say for sure just how long each downtime period will be or when they will happen, we can however support the means for you to get instantly back into the action without the wait!” the site notes.

No prizes (even imaginary ones) for guessing how.

It’s not as if this scheme is only applicable to bad users or those just stepping through the door either. One member who contacted TorrentFreak earlier this week has been a member of the site for eight years and had uploaded more than 10TB of data while downloading less than 3TB.

Quite bizarrely, in a recent announcement Bitsoup said that so-called ‘Power Users’ (those who contribute most to the site in terms of bandwidth) are not considered valuable to the community unless they hand over hard cash too.

“It is one thing to support the site by seeding over the years, but a member that has enjoyed access to Bitsoup for 12yrs and never, even in the face of major financial failures, have said ‘OK, they need help I will pitch in a donation’ does not belong here,” the site said.

“It is one thing to share back, but to abuse the site is something we have made very clear that in 2016 will not be accepted. Without a site, you have nothing to share.”

For those who understand torrents, this is keyboard-smashing stuff. Without users contributing their upload bandwidth, sites like Bitsoup simply cannot exist. Equally, if users are deemed to be unworthy of being on a site due to them not sharing enough, the site must also acknowledge that those who share the most are of great value. Calling them site abusers is ridiculous.

While sites like Bitsoup are free to make whatever rules they like, it is crystal clear that there is growing discontent over how things are being handled. In fact, things have gotten so bad that the site now has its own sub-Reddit, filled with little but complaints.

People can spend their money where they like but at this point giving it to Spotify and Netflix each month would be infinitely more rewarding than contributing to this farce.

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

For many digital pirates the Internet is a playground, a place where they can do as they please without fear of retribution. While that assertion has become less valid as the years have progressed, acts of sharing defiance are still commonplace.

With the ‘War on Sharing’ apparently impossible to win by force alone, various educational campaigns have been launched by the entertainment industries in the hope that pirates and would-be pirates will eventually see the error of their ways.

In the UK one such project from Creative Content UK is known as Get it Right From a Genuine Site. While yet to achieve significant mainstream exposure, the overall campaign is head and shoulders above the offensive and aggressive campaigns of years gone by.

Whether the millions being spent by the government will have the desired effect is unknown at this point, but those behind the campaign have already taken measures to ensure that it doesn’t get sabotaged.

UK music group BPI owns the GetitRightFromaGenuineSite.org domain but to be doubly sure there are no imposters the group has also bagged at least 17 others, including the .audio, .band, .biz, .com, .digital, .email, .foundation and .net variants.

TF discovered these domains while trawling through WHOIS records this week but it was more of a surprise to see that the BPI had also grabbed a bunch of ‘pirate’ versions too. As can be seen below, the BPI has secured the opportunity for people to GetitRightFromaPirateSite too.

Of course, the chances of the BPI turning its hand to torrent and streaming site promotion are somewhat slim so there must be an alternative reason for it securing not only this .com variant but also many, many more.

We spoke to the music group who confirmed that their intention was indeed preventing abuse of the ‘Get it Right’ campaign.

“It’s standard practice to adopt in respect of brands or major campaigns or initiatives,” a BPI spokesperson said.

“It gives options should alternatives ever be required and also helps to reduce possible abuse.”

The BPI’s strategy here is pretty sound as this kind of thing has happened in the past.

Perhaps most famously, aggressive Swedish anti-piracy outfit and Pirate Bay nemesis Antipiratbyran (Anti-Piracy Agency) was countered by equally notorious piracy activist group Piratbyran (Piracy Agency) whose website remains operational to this day.

But while a notional threat of sabotage remains in 2016, it seems much less likely today than it did several years ago. It’s true that millions of people are currently sharing content every day but the stunts carried out by activists during file-sharing’s golden years have largely disappeared.

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

In 2013 the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) through the European Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights commissioned a study titled “European Citizens and Intellectual Property: Perception, Awareness and Behavior.”

Among other things the survey found that young people are often skeptical of the value that intellectual property can bring to the economy. With that in mind EUIPO ordered a follow-up study among 15-24 year-olds in all 28 Member States, aiming to learn more about the way young people behave online and why they obtain content both legally and illegally.

The resulting report, Intellectual Property and Youth 2016, has just been published and it raises some interesting points, including that young people do not feel particularly well-informed about IP issues.

Poorly informed

“The report reveals that young European citizens feel there is a lack of information about IP that would help them understand the issues. They also say that the information that is available is not communicated effectively to their age group,” says EUIPO Executive Director António Campinos.

“These factors combine to produce an atmosphere of indifference so that many young people who have been brought up in this digital age do not care whether they infringe IP or not.”

One in four admit to piracy

According to the study, one in four young people admitted to using illegal sources to access content during the previous 12 months. However, an impressive 81% of respondents said that they use legal sources for accessing online content, leaving a tiny percentage as self-confessed hardcore pirates.

“This means that only a minority (5%) solely uses illegal sources to access online content,” the report notes.

Overall, music was the most popular content downloaded or streamed by young people with 97% of respondents saying they do so from both legal and illegal sources. Just over half (56%) of young people said they use illegal sources to access music.

In contrast, 95% of respondents said they obtained movies and TV shows online in the preceding 12 months, with 85% admitting doing so intentionally from illegal sources.

Reasons for using pirate sources

Of course, the big question is why these young people choose to act illegally. Perhaps unsurprisingly, two-thirds cited price as the main driver for obtaining content from pirate sources.

However, the second most important reason according to respondents is that they simply do not see anything wrong with piracy as long as it’s for personal use. A not insignificant 38% of young people hold this opinion. Interestingly, that number reduces to 28% among the subset who graduated from higher education.

From this point on, however, the reasons for using illegal sources relate mostly to service issues. Content being available more quickly was cited by 33%, closely followed by 31% who enjoyed not being forced to register for a service. An equal 30% enjoyed both the larger choice on pirate sites while finding media easier to discover and access.

Reasons to stop being a pirate

In keeping with the finding that price is a key motivator to commit piracy, the survey found that the number one reason (58%) for young people to stop using illegal sources would be the availability of affordable content from legal sources.

In second place with 36% came the risk of punishment, followed by personally having a bad experience on a pirate site. Just 18% said that consideration of the harms caused by piracy would be a factor in avoiding illegal sources.

“Amongst those in the focus groups who are aware that they are using illegal sources to access digital content, the potential loss of income that music or movie stars could suffer caused by their behavior, does not seem to make an impression,” the report concludes.

While the survey’s findings (pdf) suggest that there is an opportunity for the entertainment industries to gain ground with educational campaigns alongside the threat of some kind of punishment, nothing can trump available, affordable content presented in a convenient and timely manner.

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

In 2007, copyright trolls landed on UK shores. Targeting alleged downloaders of the video game Dream Pinball 3D, more than 500 people received demands for cash in exchange for making imaginary court cases go away.

After several disasters at the turn of the decade, trolls are now back in the UK in force (1,2) with tuned-up business models designed to intimidate.

Instead of hiring lawyers who are open to scrutiny, they employ middlemen who cannot be investigated by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority. This leaves their targets with little protection, and a dilemma of whether to fight the trolls alone or hire a lawyer.

Interestingly the UK government has now indicated an interest in these cases. In an advisory notice just published by the Intellectual Property Office, the government offers guidance on how copyright trolls operate and how people should handle them.

Outlining the problem

“You may have received a letter if the copyright owner believes someone has used your internet connection to download copyright protected material, such as a film, if the material was downloaded without their permission. For example from a file sharing website,” the IPO begins.

“Rights holders may seek compensation for the financial loss they have suffered. Companies such as Golden Eye, TCYK LLC and Mircom have taken action to get compensation in recent years.”

What all of these companies have in common is that when they correspond with the bill payer they insist that person must be either directly responsible for the infringement or must have had a hand in it. The Intellectual Property Office quite rightly points out that these assertions are not necessarily true.

“It’s important to understand that the copyright owner can only take action against the person who actually committed the infringement. This may not be you. Your internet service provider (ISP) can only provide them with details of the internet account holder. Who may not be the actual infringer,” the IPO notes.

Government advice

The first pointer provided by the government is for people not to bury their heads in the sand.

“Don’t ignore the letter. Even if you believe that you or anyone with access to your internet connection hasn’t downloaded the copyright protected material. You should respond, even if you request more time to seek advice before you provide a more detailed response,” the IPO says.

“If you didn’t know anything about the alleged copyright infringement check the letter is genuine. There are scams operating where letters are sent to try and gain compensation from you when you might not have to pay.”

Checking with people who have access to your Internet

At this point the IPO suggest that letter recipients should check with friends or family who have had access to their Internet.

“They may have downloaded or uploaded the copyright protected material. They may be responsible for the alleged infringement,” the IPO says.

While that may indeed be the case, there is no requirement of a bill payer to go around playing detective on behalf of copyright trolls. If these companies know who is guilty of the infringement they should say so up front. If they don’t they are simply on a fishing exercise and without using the same words, the government seems to agree.

“It is the responsibility of the copyright owner to prove who has committed the infringement. This may not be the internet account holder,” the IPO says.

In closing the Intellectual Property Office suggests that letter recipients could contact Citizens Advice or speak with a solicitor. Those seeking to do the latter can speak with Michael Coyle at Lawdit Solicitors in Southampton who handles these cases for less than £100.

It’s not clear why the government has suddenly taken an interest in the activities of copyright trolls in the UK, but the intervention of Ian Austin MP may have been factor. Austin says he was “disgusted” to hear that an 82-year-old woman had been accused of pirating a movie by troll outfit TCYK LLC. He vowed to raise the matter in Parliament.

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

Every day millions of Internet users fire up a desktop-based BitTorrent client to download and share everything from movies, TV shows and music, to the latest Linux distros.

Sharing of multimedia content is mostly achieved by use of a desktop client such as uTorrent, Vuze, qBitTorrent or Transmission, but thanks to Stanford University graduate Feross Aboukhadijeh, there is another way.

WebTorrent is a BitTorrent client for the web. Instead of using standalone applications like those listed above it allows people to share files directly from their browser, without having to install any additional software.

“WebTorrent is the first torrent client built for the web. It’s written completely in JavaScript – the language of the web – and uses WebRTC for true peer-to-peer transport. No browser plugin, extension, or installation is required,” Feross previously told TF.

Such has been WebTorrent’s impact, even Netflix contacted Feross to discuss his technology, which could greatly benefit the streaming video service by reducing its bandwidth consumption. But while WebTorrent “for the web” continues its development, Feross has just unveiled his latest creation.

At first glance WebTorrent Desktop (WDT) seems like a step back, in that it appears to move WebTorrent away from webpages and places it back in the desktop environment like a regular torrent client. However, what WDT does is provide a super smooth video streaming experience with a few really neat tricks up its sleeve.

Firstly, WTD looks nothing like any other torrent client. Its clean and straightforward interface is easily navigated and offers little in the way of configuration options or indeed clutter, which in this case is a good thing. The aim is to get the in-built player streaming video as quickly as possible and it achieves that with style.

Torrents are added by using a .torrent file or by copy/pasting a magnet link and in a matter of seconds on a reasonably well-seeded torrent, videos can be played almost immediately. The in-built player is a basic affair but has all the necessary controls to navigate within a video. This is where WebTorrent Desktop excels.

Even without the whole video file being downloaded it’s possible to skip around on the timeline, with WDT fetching the appropriate pieces of the file on demand for almost instant playback. This makes skipping to the last few minutes of a movie or sporting event a breeze, for example.

Also of interest to those who enjoy watching from the comfort of their armchair is the inclusion of AirPlay, Chromecast and DLNA support. WebTorrent Desktop found my network-connected TV as soon as it was switched on and playback was instantaneous.

But while streaming in various torrent clients has been possible for some time, WebTorrent Desktop has another neat feature up its sleeve. In addition to gathering peers via trackers, DHT and PEX, it also supports the WebTorrent protocol for connecting to WebRTC peers.

This enables the client to tap into a pool of additional peers such as those running WebTorrent in their browsers on Instant.io. As the diagram below shows, WebTorrent Desktop acts as a bridge to bring these two sets of peers together.

Available for Windows, Mac and Linux, WebTorrent Desktop is both free and open source, with its source available on Github. It also has zero advertising and none of the bloatware associated with other clients available today.

The WebTorrent Desktop Beta can be downloaded here.

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

Anyone who has spent any significant amount of time on the Internet will be familiar with the practice of geo-blocking.

In one of its most visible forms Internet users are told by YouTube that the video they’re trying to access contains content from ‘company x’…”who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.”

It’s a major irritant that most people simply cannot (and really shouldn’t have to) get their heads around. After all, the content is there to be enjoyed yet someone, somewhere, has chosen to flick the off-switch purely based on a consumer’s IP address. A ring-fenced Internet is not what most people want when they jump online.

Yet while people get angry at content providers who do everything in their power to lock movies and TV shows to a particular region, those same providers are also suffering at their own hands.

There’s little doubt that product ‘windowing’ is one of the causes of Internet piracy, with citizens of one country deemed more worthy than others when it comes to release dates. And one only has to look at the recent crackdown on people accessing Netflix with a VPN to see that more than ever, rightsholders are determined to enforce their territorial practices.

For the 508 million citizens of the EU, this kind of behavior seems particularly unacceptable. Alongside the free movement of people and the ease of doing cross-border trade, people are still ring-fenced in respect of the digital content they can buy or rent online. That kind of behavior is increasingly being viewed as unacceptable and a new push from the part EU-funded European Consumer Organization (BEUC) aims to do something about it.

“It happens unfortunately in great recurrence that consumers find that they cannot watch films or sport events online if they are on a foreign site, or they find that they are prevented from ordering a product from another Member State or must pay higher prices for a service abroad because their access has been blocked,” BEUC explains.

“This is because companies ‘geo-block’ their services and offers. That is to say they erect artificial barriers to prevent consumers in other European Union countries accessing their services.”

It makes for somewhat uncomfortable viewing, but a new ‘hidden camera’ video published by BEUC highlights just how ridiculous that kind of discrimination would appear in the physical world. Carried out person to person, ‘geo-blocking’ really is quite offensive.

“We believe discriminatory territorial practices should stop and we ask the EU to do two things,” BEUC says.

“First, consumers should be allowed to access content such as sport events, music streams, movies and TV programs from any provider in the EU. This would curb piracy (accessing the content from unauthorized sources) and help all consumers to enjoy Europe’s cultural diversity. Secondly, the rules preventing discrimination on the basis a consumer’s place of residence when selling goods or services need to be sharpened.”

The push from BEUC and its 40 consumer organization members is timely. Last month initial findings published as a result of the EU Commission’s e-commerce antitrust inquiry revealed widespread content blocking across the European Union.

A significant 68% of digital content providers reported blocking consumers located in other EU countries, with almost three-quarters of suppliers in the fiction TV, films and sports sectors admitting that they engage in contractual geo-blocking.

Overall, BEUC’s calls will fall on sympathetic ears. Last year the European Commission adopted a Digital Single Market Strategy which among other things aims “to end unjustified geo-blocking,” which it described as “a discriminatory practice used for commercial reasons.”

Bread, pastry and coffee blocking isn’t expected to expand anytime soon but the EU probably has a battle on its hands to end the practice in the digital domain.

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

From August 2015, an anonymous source began leaking around 11.5 million secret documents created by the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca to German news outlet Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ).

Comprised of documents created since the 1970s, the 2.6 terabytes of data (known as the Panama Papers) shine light on 214,000 anonymous offshore companies located around the world, often setup to hide their owners’ identities and business dealings.

“The data provides rare insights into a world that can only exist in the shadows. It proves how a global industry led by major banks, legal firms, and asset management companies secretly manages the estates of the world’s rich and famous: from politicians, Fifa officials, fraudsters and drug smugglers, to celebrities and professional athletes,” SZ writes.

One of the individuals now mired in controversy is Prime Minister of Iceland Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson. Leaks from the Panama Papers show that the 41-year-old and now wife Anna Sigurlaug Pálsdóttir owned an offshore that held millions of dollars in bonds during the country’s financial crisis.

According to The Guardian, the papers show that Gunnlaugsson co-owned a company called Wintris Inc, set up in 2007 in the British Virgin Islands to handle investments with his partner.

Gunnlaugsson is said to have owned a 50% stake in Wintris for more than two years, which was later transferred to his wife who held the other 50%. However, while Gunnlaugsson was still a Wintris shareholder he was elected to parliament as leader of the Progressive Party. He never declared his Wintris shares on Iceland’s register of MPs’ financial interests as required.

Yesterday Gunnlaugsson walked out of an extremely awkward interview (below) and is now facing calls to hold a snap general election.

If an election does in indeed go ahead, Icelandic politics will be on a knife edge. Last Friday Gallup published the results of its latest poll and it shows that the leading political force in Iceland is the Pirate Party.

As the chart clearly shows, not only is the Pirate Party way ahead of its nearest rival, but it’s also polling just ahead of the combined Independence Party/Progressive Party coalition government – and this was the position before the Panama leaks controversy.

For a country that relies on coalition governments this is a pretty big deal and for the local Pirate Party the achievement is nothing less than astonishing. In 2013 (and after just a few months of existence) the party achieved 5.1% of the vote and entered national government with three Members of Parliament.

It is now looking at the possibility of a much bigger prize with Pirate MP and spokesperson Birgitta Jónsdóttir noting that the party is prepared.

“In these strange times anything is possible,” she says.

“It’s a really liquid situation. But, of course, if it happens we are ready. We have been asked time and time again since we scored so high in the polls. We are ready.”

Jónsdóttir says she feels that Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson won’t step down and during a live TV broadcast yesterday he confirmed as much, stating that the Panama Papers contained “nothing new” about his and his wife’s business affairs.

Nevertheless, this storm is far from over. With the revelation that the Prime Minister’s finance minister and interior minister also had stakes in offshore companies, thousands of people protested outside Iceland’s Parliament last evening calling for the government to step down.

Only time will tell how this situation will play out, but the prospect of a Pirate-led coalition government is both intriguing and unprecedented.

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

Fueled by poor official content availability and unfair pricing, millions of Aussie citizens have turned to unauthorized channels to get their content fix, mainly via torrent and streaming sites.

As a result and after being stirred up largely by Hollywood in the United States, two anti-piracy strategies have emerged. The first involves local ISPs being ordered to block The Pirate Bay and similar sites.

The second is a “three strikes” style warning scheme that would see regular Internet users being monitored by anti-piracy companies and then sent escalating warning notices by their respective ISPs. The idea is that after receiving several these warnings, Internet subscribers will eventually change their ways.

But while site blocking is currently full-steam ahead with The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, isoHunt, TorrentHound and SolarMovie being targeted in Federal Court, negotiations over the warning scheme have labored for years and yielded few results.

In February it was revealed that three-strikes (or graduated response as its often known) would not be immediately going ahead. As has been the case for years, rightsholders and ISPs simply couldn’t agree over who would pay for what was clearly going to be an expensive system.

This raises the somewhat extraordinary situation that having pleaded with the Australian government for “three strikes”, having submitted a draft to the Australian Communications and Media Authority a year ago, and having missed the government-mandated deadline for implementation last September 1, rightsholders and ISPs are now having to lobby the government to put it on hold.

According to ITNews, earlier today Communications Alliance CEO John Stanton told the CommsDay summit that rightsholders and ISPs were working on a joint approach to the government to ask for the “three strikes” scheme to be suspended for another 12 months.

“[The plan is to say] ‘given that the focus is on website blocking at the moment, let’s put that draft code into abeyance and not have the [Australian Communications and Media Authority] seek to further examine it for possible registration, and we’ll come back in 12 months and see whether it makes sense to try and reinvigorate those commercial discussions’,” Stanton says.

Stanton’s statement is clearly trying to focus on the potential gains to be had via a site-blocking regime but discussions on “three strikes” preceded blocking plans by several years and have always been favored by rightsholders. Indeed, even in countries where blocking is already in place, moves to bring in warning notices have continued unabated. But, as always, the real issue revolves around who will pay.

“Hopefully [the suspension] will give us at least a good holding position, and we’ll see in a year’s time whether there really is a problem of scale that needs to be dealt with by a costly and complex scheme,” Stanton explains.

The problem has always been about costs. Rightsholders strongly believe that ISPs should pay a large proportion of the scheme but that position is rarely supported by the ISPs themselves. Even in countries where notice schemes are going ahead, limits on the numbers of notices are often put in place. Which, given the projected cost in Australia, wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

“At the moment, [the warning system] is manual,” Village Roadshow co-chief executive Graham Burke said in February. “And it’s just so labor intense, that it’s somewhere in the vicinity of $16 to $20 per notice, which is prohibitive. You might as well give people a DVD.”

Reading between the lines it seems possible that rightsholders and ISPs will seek to come up with a more cost-effective automated system during the next year. The agreement to have some kind of system is now in place but it will all rest on the price tag. If that can be brought down to a few cents per warning then it will be all systems go.

In the meantime, troll activity and plans by Village Roadshow to take a few people court not withstanding, Australians appear to have at least another year of trouble-free downloading – if they can get round the site blocks.

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