Author: Andy

When it comes to accusations over music piracy and subsequent litigation, US-based Warner is usually on the aggressive side of the fence. However, a case that has just concluded in Spain shows that sometimes the tables can be turned.

Parque Warner (Warner Park) is a theme park located just outside the Spanish capital Madrid. It opened in 2002 under the management of Six Flags with Time Warner taking a 5% stake. In 2004, Six Flags left the operation and Time Warner took over management duties, renaming the operation Warner Bros. Park and later Parque Warner Madrid.

Like all similar operations Parque Warner relies heavily on music to set atmosphere for its millions of visitors, something which the company obviously has to pay for. However, according to local music rights groups the company wasn’t always paying its fair share.

In an effort to correct this situation the Association of Management of Intellectual Rights AGEDI and the Association of Artists and Performers AIE filed a joint lawsuit which called for Parque Warner to pay appropriate rates for the recordings it had played in public. The groups also demanded that while the legal action played out, Parque Warner should stop using copyrighted music.

In May 2010, Commercial Court No. 7 of Madrid ruled in favor of AGEDI / AIE but on appeal the case moved to the Provincial Court of Madrid for a second hearing. In 2013 the court again ruled in favor of the artists but determined to achieve a better outcome, Parque Warner appealed to the Supreme Court.

Upholding the earlier decision of the Provincial Court, the Supreme Court has now rejected the appeal and ordered Parque Warner to pay compensation totaling $354,000 (321,450 euros) to AGEDI and AIE.

The Supreme Court said that the Warner used music in an “intense and continuous” manner during a six year period between 2002 and 2008 without obtaining permission from rightsholders.

“The communication to the public of recordings took place in all areas of recreation in the leisure park, including forms of transit, attractions and catering venues and retail outlets”, the Court said.

Noting that the park must “pay fair compensation” to artists, the Court found that the rates charged to Warner were reasonable since they only applied to periods when the park was open each year, from March to November in this instance. Warner had previously argued that the rates had wrongly been applied for full year periods.

Since the case has now been heard at the highest level, Warner has no further avenues for appeal.

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

Last month TorrentFreak reported on a script which mashes-up Spotify and YouTube and enables anyone to set up a decent free music service with a minimum of fuss.

“Youtubify allows you to create your own music streaming website in minutes with no coding knowledge,” the script’s sales pitch reads. “It has an impressive feature set that rivals and even surpasses other biggest streaming services on the market.”

At a cost of just $38 YouTubify has already been deployed on dozens of sites but it seems that the road ahead might not be as smooth as first anticipated.

TorrentFreak has learned that the operator of “Syotify“, a site using the YouTubify script, has just been contacted by Spotify’s legal team.

“Spotify has recently discovered that some of the things that you do violate Spotify’s intellectual property and other rights,” Spotify told the site.

“Spotify is all for you making a living and running a business, but when that business interferes with Spotify’s rights, we hope you understand that Spotify can’t just sit back and take no action.”

Spotify begins by making it clear that the domain name ‘Syotify’ is too close to its own trademark and as a result is likely to mislead Spotify’s customers.

“Your registration and use of the Infringing Domain Name and your unauthorized use of the Spotify Marks is likely to confuse people into thinking that your website (including its domain name) is somehow associated with or approved by Spotify,” the letter continues.

“Unfortunately, no reasonable explanation exists for your registration of the Infringing Domain Name and use of the Spotify Marks other than the bad-faith intent to profit from the goodwill associated with the Spotify Marks.”

While it initially appears that Spotify is mostly concerned about its trademarks, a closer examination of the cease-and-desist sent to Syotify reveals a fundamental problem with how third-party services leverage Spotify’s API.

“[Y]our website offers the service of converting Spotify’s streaming music service to create playlists on YouTube in violation of Spotify’s user agreement. Essentially you use the Spotify Marks to promote a competitive website that, at the least, appears to generate revenue from third-party advertising,” Spotify writes.

Noting that Syotify’s website breaches trademark, cybersquatting and copyright infringement laws, Spotify gives the site just ten days to comply with a list of demands including:

– Stop using the ‘Infringing Domain Name’
– Provide a list of any other “Spotify-related” domains also registered
– Transfer all “infringing domains” to Spotify
– Permanently stop using any marks “confusingly similar” to Spotify marks

But while most of the above relates to alleged trademark-style infringements, the final demand from Spotify indicates that the company will not allow the use of its API to power what amounts to a rival service.

“[Syotify is required to] permanently stop offering and providing services impermissibly derived from Spotify’s own services,” Spotify’s legal team writes.

Also of interest is that the cease and desist letter referenced above was actually sent to Cloudflare, who passed it on to Syotify as required. However, Spotify also calls on Cloudflare to take action against the music service.

“We assume that you respect the intellectual property rights of others and therefore request that CloudFare remove the infringing content,” Spotify writes.

There’s no indication that Cloudflare intends to do so but TF understands that the company has forwarded the details of Syotify’s hosting provider to Spotify and also forwarded the complaint, so dealing with the site at source is now an option.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, the owner of Syotify says that he was written to Spotify to acknowledge receipt of the company’s complaint but has not yet decided how to respond.

It’s possible that he may move to a new domain to stop infringing on Spotify’s trademarks but he’s not prepared to hand any domains over to Spotify. There is also the chance of him transitioning from a Spotify-powered site to one using Last FM, but nothing has been decided yet.

At the time of publication Spotify had not responded to our request for comment.

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

TCYK LLP is a US-based company set up to turn Internet piracy of the Robert Redford movie The Company You Keep into profit by tracking down alleged downloaders of the movie and sending them demands for cash.

After taking their case to the High Court in 2014, TCYK LLP were granted an order which forced ISP Sky to hand over the names and addresses of subscribers alleged to have downloaded and shared the movie without permission.

Last summer the first Sky customers began receiving letters from TCYK, which first laid out the company’s case and then asked for hundreds of pounds to make supposed lawsuits go away.

To those familiar with these cases it will come as no surprise that TCYK eventually screwed up. With nothing but a flimsy IP address and a time stamp for evidence they accused 83-year-old Sky customer Patricia Drew of being an Internet pirate.

“I’m upset to have been accused of something I didn’t do… how many other people has this happened to?” she said last month.

While many thousands of other individuals have been targeted in similar action in the UK, there’s nothing like picking on the elderly to enrage the public. As a result (and thanks to TCYK’s scattergun approach) they’ve now attracted the attention of Ms Drew’s local Member of Parliament.

Ian Austin is the MP for Dudley North and he says he is disgusted that the pensioner is being “bullied and hounded” for compensation.

“This company has made a ludicrous allegation,” Austin told Express and Star.

Ratcheting up the pressure, the MP says that he has written to Business Secretary Sajid Javid calling for action to safeguard consumers like Patricia.

“I am waiting to hear from the Business Secretary to see what action the Government plan to take on this disgraceful behavior.”

Ian Austin says he will also raise the matter in Parliament and if he keeps to his word this will be yet another occasion that so-called “copyright trolls” have attracted the attention of Parliament and indeed the House of Lords.

In 2010, Lord Lucas slammed the activities of now-defunct copyright troll firm ACS:Law as “straightforward legal blackmail” while demanding that something be done to ensure that citizens’ personal details were not given out to similar companies “willy-nilly”.

Nevertheless, five years on and little has changed, except the way these companies operate. Instead of having regulated and accountable law firms front and center, companies like TCYK are now writing to Internet subscribers themselves or via companies operating out of virtual offices. This means that people in Patricia Drew’s position have no Solicitors Regulatory Authority to turn to when things get ugly.

“It is clearly a loophole in the law that allows them to behave like this. The only way this will stop is if our lawmakers step in and take action,” says Dave Drew, Patricia’s son.

“My mother is stunned by what is going on but there is no way we will be paying up.”

Although companies like TCYK threaten legal action for anyone that refuses to pay their ‘fines’, not once has a contested case ever gone to court in the UK. With the heat now being applied to Patricia Drew’s case, there is almost zero change that TCYK will pursue her case further.

The entire business model of these companies centers around quick settlements for relatively large sums of money and thus far Patricia’s case is not only yielding no profit but is likely to result in even fewer people caving in to TCYK’s demands.

It will be very interesting to hear what Ian Austin MP comes back with from Parliament and whether anything can be done to stop the wave of troll-style lawsuits in the UK.

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

Although not absolutely essential for making BitTorrent work these days, torrent trackers are always handy things to have. A bit like a policeman directing traffic, they ensure that BitTorrent clients can find each other quickly in order to share content.

Torrent indexes such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents (that don’t have a tracker) make the headlines regularly but it’s relatively rare for standalone BitTorrent trackers to make the news. They’re generally considered a bit of a techie phenomenon and to the casual torrent user they’re a silent benefit.

Nevertheless, trackers are interesting. For example, private torrent communities such as What.cd would have a big problem existing without one, since relying on magnet links would open the site’s torrents up to the public and destroy their privacy. In this scenario, trackers are great tools for putting What.cd’s users in touch with each other, relatively securely.

But while trackers are most closely associated with torrent sites, other organizations use them too. Indeed, after doing some digging around on “Internet of Things” search engine Shodan this week we were surprised to discover Apple running tracker services on around three dozen IP addresses located at its headquarters in Cupertino.

On the most common tracker port 6969, active trackers can be found on several IP addresses allocated to Apple including 17.17.17.102, 17.17.17.108, 17.17.17.30, 17.17.17.59, 17.17.17.8, 17.17.17.15, 17.17.17.133, 17.17.17.110, 17.17.17.138, 17.17.17.248, 17.17.17.56 and 17.17.17.248.

Trackers services can also be found running on (HTTP) port 80 on IP addresses including 17.17.17.220, 17.17.17.41, 17.17.17.44, 17.17.17.170, 17.17.17.58, 17.17.17.21, 17.17.17.104, 17.17.17.102, 17.17.17.133, 17.17.17.59, 17.17.17.108, 17.17.17.27, 17.17.17.5, 17.17.17.15, 17.17.17.24, 17.17.17.243, 17.17.17.68 and 17.17.17.41.

According to Shodan, IP address 17.17.17.102 reports trackers running on port 6969 and port 80.

TorrentFreak contacted Apple to learn more about the purpose of these trackers but at the time of publication we hadn’t received a response. However, we did manage to reach Shodan CEO John Matherly who told us that his company carries out several checks beyond a port being open to ensure its results are accurate.

“To determine whether a computer is running a BitTorrent tracker Shodan sends a connection request with a transaction ID of 0x34925,” Matherly told TF.

“If the host responds to the connection request with a valid BitTorrent tracker response (i.e. with an action, transaction id and connection id) AND the transaction ID matches what the Shodan crawler originally sent (0x34925) then it is considered a BitTorrent tracker.”

The Shodan CEO couldn’t shine any additional light on Apple’s need for BitTorrent trackers but he joined us in the theory that the company probably uses them for internal distribution, possibly like Twitter and Facebook do already.

In 2010, Twitter announced that BitTorrent made server deployment 75 times faster than before.

“Using the file-sharing protocol, we launched a side-project called Murder and after a few days (and especially nights) of nervous full-site tinkering, it turned a 40 minute deploy process into one that lasted just 12 seconds,” an engineer reported at the time.

Facebook also uses BitTorrent to quickly shift large quantities of data and back in 2010 the company raved over its benefits.

“BitTorrent is fantastic for this, it’s really great,” the company said. “It’s ‘superduper’ fast and it allows us to alleviate a lot of scaling concerns we’ve had in the past, where it took forever to get code to the webservers before you could even boot it up and run it.”

A TF source who prefers to remain anonymous says that after running the Apple IP addresses against an eight million torrent database, none of them produced a match, something which boosts the ‘internal use’ theory. That said, in an ideal world internal processes shouldn’t really be exposed to the public, so it remains unclear why Shodan is reporting public facing BitTorrent trackers at Cupertino.

Finally, it’s interesting to take the existence of these trackers and place that alongside Apple’s aggressive stance towards the millions of customers who would also like to use torrent software on Apple devices. On several occasions the company has removed torrent applications from its App Store yet the company seems happy to benefit from the technology itself.

If Apple responds to our request for comment, we’ll be sure to update this article.

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

The Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet (Marco Civil da Internet) is legislation that governs the use of the Internet in Brazil. Under development since 2009 the Marco Civil aims to protect online privacy rights, net neutrality principles and other key issues.

The law was passed in April 2014 after being fast-tracked in the wake of the Snowden revelations. Last year the legislation entered its second stage with the Ministry of Justice announcing a public consultation process allowing stakeholders to contribute to the development of the law.

Of course, where legislation is available to be shaped Hollywood is rarely far behind and as a result the Motion Picture Association and its studio members quickly got involved. They believe that the Marco Civil’s net neutrality provisions present problems for rightsholders who need to be able to protect their content against online infringement.

Last year the MPA told Justice Minister José Eduardo Cardozo that the legislation’s wording was too tight and exceptions were needed to allow for anti-piracy enforcement. This week the public consultation came to a close and it’s now clear that the stance of the MPA is shared by many other rightsholders in the audiovisual sector.

In a proposal submitted by the MPA, the Brazilian Association of Intellectual Property (ABPI), Brazilian Association of Independent Television Producers (ABPI-TV) and Brazilian Association of Audiovisual Works Production (APRO) and others, demands for site-blocking are front and center.

In common with other regions where site-blocking measures have been introduced, the MPA wants Brazil to order its Internet service providers to block ‘pirate’ sites located outside the country, beyond Brazil’s jurisdiction. It’s expected that the existing legal system will deal with those hosted domestically.

“Although foreign [pirate site] hosts can not be forced to delete the illegal content from their servers, access to these can be hampered by technical measures implemented by Brazilian Internet service providers,” the proposal reads.

According to local media this is the first time that cinema associations, large Brazilian producers and Hollywood studios have joined together under one banner.

“We can not accept that the Internet is a free area for lawlessness,” said Edson Vismona, president of the umbrella group National Forum Against Piracy and Illegality (FNCP).

“Our mission is to set some milestones to show that illegality will not prosper. We have to respect all the principles of freedom of expression, but not actions that violate citizens’ basic rights.”

The group says that if Brazil implements the required measures it will be in good company since countries including Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, the UK, Portugal and Spain already engaged in site blocking.

Of course, the great irony here is that while the MPA demands site blocking of Brazil, there is no site blocking taking place in the United States. Nevertheless, the MPA and its colleagues want a “clear provision for site blocking techniques” and exceptions written into the Marco Civil.

Only time will tell if they will get their way.

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

As copyright holders try to slow the spread of copyrighted content, torrent and streaming sites are being blocked by ISPs across Europe and Russia at an alarming rate.

On the one hand this is an annoyance to site operators, who are having to adapt their operations in order to mitigate the effects of blockades. On the other, music and movie companies feel justified in taking any measures they can to protect their rights.

Somewhere in the middle lies the ordinary users who, in an effort to circumvent blockades, are ending up on copycat, clone and just plain scammy sites that are cynically cashing in on all the confusion. One site attempting to do something about this problem is Russian torrent giant RuTracker.org.

Blocked by local ISPs following escalating disputes with copyright holders, the site says that its users are falling foul to clone sites carrying out phishing and extortion-like attacks. RuTracker believes that if it obtained a recognizable URL ending in .RU, local users would be more reassured that they’re visiting the correct site.

To that end RuTracker.org has been trying to obtain RuTracker.ru, a domain currently owned by a rival torrent site.

“Blocks are not much for us to care about. Much more important for us is that users can accidentally fall on phishing sites that steal passwords,” an RuTracker representative told Izvestia.

Unlike its much larger namesake, RuTracker.ru is not currently blocked by court order and since RuTracker.org really wants an .RU domain, RuTracker.ru is the natural choice. However, the site also has aspirations of keeping the price realistic and that appears to be a stumbling block.

Izvestia managed to track down RuTracker.ru owner Oleg Volkov who told the publication he isn’t happy with the price being offered.

“From 100,000 rubles, you can start a conversation. But I’m not eager to sell it,” he said.

Indeed, less than $1,400 seems like a giveaway price, especially for a site with as many visitors as RuTracker.org. However, another issue has the potential to further complicate matters.

RuTracker.org is owned by a company called DreamTorrent Corp. and in 2012 the outfit applied for two trademarks – RuTracker and RuTrackerorg. A year later the site acquired the rights to the names.

So, in theory at least, DreamTorrent could use its grip on its trademarks to attempt to gain control of RuTracker.ru by force. However, the site has said that it does not wish to go down that route and would prefer to negotiate a fair price instead.

But while the details are being thrashed out it seems that RuTracker.org has been experiencing yet more blocking problems, this time from an unexpected direction.

According to a post by an administrator on the site’s forum, RuTracker recently began receiving reports that the site was no longer accessible to users from outside Russia from countries including Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Israel.

It transpired that RuTracker had engaged the services of an anti-DDoS company based in Russia, who had begun passing foreign traffic destined for the site through the Russian Federation. Since RuTracker is blocked by Russian ISPs, this foreign traffic also became blocked.

The problem was eventually solved but it does show how blockades can overreach and cause unintended consequences, in this case a locally-focused block extending internationally.

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

Having run out of patience with the platform over Internet piracy, in 2014 Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music sued Russian social networking giant VKontakte.

Sony dropped out of the action during last summer after agreeing a confidential settlement with vKontakte but the Universal and Warner cases continued.

“VK’s music service, unlike others in Russia, is an unlicensed file-sharing service that is designed for copyright infringement on a large-scale,” the IFPI said at the time.

Last September both labels enjoyed a significant victory when the Saint Petersburg & Leningradsky Region Arbitration Court found that although vKontakte could not be held liable for infringement, it was obliged to implement “effective” filtering or other technology to prevent infringement of the labels’ rights.

In the Universal Music case the label had asked for 13 music tracks to be removed from vKontakte and compensation of around 15.6 million rubles ($212,900). Warner asked for the removal of 17 tracks and a compensation package worth 20.4 million rubles ($278,400).

This week, however, the celebrations were called off when the region’s Appeal Court issued judgments on March 2nd and 3rd overturning the earlier ruling which ordered vKontakte to implement anti-piracy measures. In a double blow, the Court also upheld the earlier decision that vKontakte is not liable for its users’ piracy.

“These are disappointing judgments which are out of step with rulings both in Russia and around the world, and leave Russia as one of the very few significant music markets in the world that is dominated by a single unlicensed service,” IFPI Chief Executive Frances Moore said in a statement.

Speaking with local media, vKontakte spokesperson Evgeny Krasnikov said that the company had “nailed down” its position as a “bona fide information intermediary.”

IFPI says that the labels will take both decisions to appeal.

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

It hardly needs to be said but entertainment industry companies see file-sharing as theft on a grand scale. They believe that millions – perhaps billions – of dollars have been lost as a result of people’s love of swapping movies, music and TV shows.

Equally, there are those that believe that the act of sharing is a friendly one that causes no damage and may even stimulate the uptake of legal products. To them, participating in or even running a sharing site is not a serious crime.

It’s a complex mix that courts have to wade through periodically in order to arrive at a decision in various cases. By now it’s clear that in the United States and Europe the act of distributing or assisting in distribution of copyrighted content without permission (outside the realms of fair use) is an offense. The big question is how those crimes should be punished by the courts.

Thanks to The Pirate Bay and dozens of similar sites, Sweden has had more than its fair share of sharing-related cases but one involving a relatively small site has the potential to draw an important line in the sand for those running ‘pirate’ portals.

Originally known as Swepirate, ‘Biosalongen‘ (Screening Room) was shutdown by authorities in early 2013. A 50-year-old man alleged to have been the main administrator of the site was arrested and charged with sharing at least 125 movies on the site including the classics Rocky, Alien and Star Trek.

The man initially denied committing any crimes but after a trial and subsequent appeal, in the summer of 2015 the Court of Appeal in Gothenburg sentenced him to eight months in prison for copyright infringement offenses.

The man, referred to in court papers as ‘BH’, feels that the punishment was unjust and has now filed a claim with the Supreme Court (HD) in order to have the indictment dismissed.

Interestingly the prosecutor also wants the case to be heard by the ‘Högsta domstolen‘ but on the matter of appropriate sanctions.

“The courts judge differently in these cases. Some think the punishment should be prison, while others think that it is enough to hand out fines and suspended sentences,” Prosecutor My Hedström told IDG.

“There is legal uncertainty there. We want the Supreme Court to determine how to view this type of crime.”

When the case was heard at the Court of Appeal the offenses were categorized as carrying a maximum penalty of 12 months but not always likely to result in detention. Therefore a shorter sentence was handed down. The Prosecutor is looking for a longer term of ten months.

The Supreme Court has been asked to look at file-sharing penalties before. In
2010 a then 25-year old a man was house-sitting for a friend when he was confronted by police officers. The police decided to inspect his computer and found that he was sharing 57 movies through uTorrent.

In the initial court case the man received a $920 fine but on appeal that was increased to around $1,200.

The case went all the way to the Supreme Court but despite the case being described by a judge as “borderline”, a prison sentence was still not handed down, much to the disappointment of the prosecutor.

However, Prosecutor Hedström feels that the current case and the historical one are different, with the one in hand being much more serious and also involving a commercial element.

“[The earlier case] was on a lower level, it was about a person who downloaded while uploaded movies. The making available was not on the same level as this case,” Hedström says.

IDG reports that the Supreme Court received the Prosecutor’s application (pdf) last Friday but it is not yet known whether leave to appeal will be granted.

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

After coming under pressure from decryption licensing outfit AACS LA, last week DVD and Blu-ray copy-protection circumvention company SlySoft shutdown.

It still hasn’t been made clear if studios including Warner Bros, Disney and technology partners Microsoft and Intel were behind the closure, but for now that’s the working assumption. Having SlySoft flagship product AnyDVD off the market would’ve been a huge feather in their collective caps.

But shutdowns of companies like SlySoft often prove troublesome and earlier this week the first signs of cracks in the closure began to show. With talk of a return under a new banner a hot topic, former developers openly discussed bringing AnyDVD and other products back online.

Making things more interesting was the revelation that SlySoft was not entirely based in Antigua but actually a decentralized operation with developers scattered in countries around the world. Developers who, it transpired, still had access to key SlySoft infrastructure and the will to reanimate the project. In the end, it didn’t take long.

Still sporting a familiar ‘fox’ logo, yesterday a reborn ‘RedFox’ rose from the ashes of SlySoft. Now hailing from Belize with at least some infrastructure in Latvia, the RedFox team delivered their first release – an update to AnyDVD, version 7.6.9.1.

“AnyDVD reborn! SlySoft is dead, long live RedFox!” declared the changelog.

“This is an intermediate release, so old customers can continue to use their existing AnyDVD license to watch their discs. This version can access the new RedFox Online Protection Database,” the group added.

Perhaps of most interest are the new features. In addition to some minor fixes and improvements, AnyDVD also supports new discs, a big first step for a product that just a week ago looked destined for the archives.

The release will only work if users already own a valid AnyDVD license, which suggests that RedFox have access to the old company’s licensing systems, another important step for keeping the business model moving forward. Additionally, old SlySoft products have also returned, including CloneBD and CloneDVD.

But while would-be pirates might find cause for celebration, not everyone in the new RedFox team welcomes being so closely associated with the practice. A developer identifying himself as ‘Peer’ says that comments made by release groups in an article published on TF at the weekend left him feeling “depressed”.

“Pirates were never the intended audience. If SlySoft could have shaken them off, they would have. In fact – some people seem to think, that without piracy, SlySoft wouldn’t have existed,” Peer explains.

For those that primarily used SlySoft’s products for piracy (and the MPAA and AACS LA seem to think that’s a whole bunch of them) the assumption seems reasonable. However, Peer sees things somewhat differently.

“Pirates only made a very small percentage of the AnyDVD userbase. And – given that they are pirates, it’s a valid question whether they were even paying customers,” he says.

“AnyDVD was created out of the frustration of a few people, who got fed up with the unplayability (yes! that word is fitting!) of DVDs and later on Blu-ray discs. So, of course, SlySoft could have easily done without the pirates – and had they, SlySoft might even still exist.”

While one can see Peer’s point (and presuming for a moment we can easily interchange the terms ‘piracy’ and ‘copyright infringement’), the fact that AnyDVD drilled a huge hole through the encryption efforts of AACS LA makes it a seriously infringing piece of software, if of course the trade groups and courts are to be believed.

So, one has to conclude that even without piracy SlySoft would’ve been in trouble, a point not lost on the developer.

“It’s not that the AACS-LA wouldn’t have gone to the same lengths trying – don’t mistake them to be fighting piracy, their goal is a more immediate one, which is to justify their existence,” Peer says.

“They have this huge money-making machine, collect fees for every [blu ray disc] ever being sold without having to really, well, do much (god, I wish I were the AACS-LA), while promising to protect the discs in return, which effectively doesn’t work – so they have no choice but to fight back.”

That fight includes taking down products like AnyDVD and DVDFab, both of which are closely connected (whether the developers like it or not) with DRM circumvention and ultimately piracy.

“You can’t deny that [piracy] is hurting the movie industry. And you can’t deny that we were involuntarily helping piracy. Just like the glass cutter involuntarily helps burglary,” Peer says.

“So, sorry MPAA, AACS and all you people with the fancy acronyms – we can’t help you with the piracy, but since no one is helping us with [playing and backing up] movies, we’re picking up things ourselves.”

Nevertheless, the intentions of the RedFox team will have little bearing on how they are perceived by the MPAA and AACS LA. They will be seen as outlaws with no respect for the laws that the industry groups worked long and hard to have put in place. On that basis alone, this battle is far from over.

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

More than two years ago The Pirate Bay revealed a plan to revolutionize its status on the web. Continually dogged by the threat of shutdown and blocking, the site’s operators said they were working on a plan to create their own P2P network.

The concept is certainly interesting. When a user loads a website on the network that data will be also be served to other users accessing the site from the user’s machine. In BitTorrent terms, people accessing the site (leechers) also serve the site (seeders) to other users, meaning that there is no central server and no one point of failure.

While The Pirate Bay’s plan hasn’t come to fruition, others have been working on a similar system. Based out of Budapest, Hungary, Zeronet offers “real-time updated, P2P websites using Bitcoin cryptography and the BitTorrent network.” The slide below describes some of the key features.

A full explanation of how the system works can be found here but for those looking to jump in at the deep-end the process is very simple. Visit Zeronet.io and follow the simple instructions and the whole thing is up and running in a couple of minutes.

Once Zeronet is launched (it appears in your chosen web browser), users are confronted not with a Google search box, but the Zeronet ‘homepage’.

Not only are Zeronet users viewing this website but they’re also hosting it too, so that when others join the network and ask for the page, they retrieve it from other Zeronet users. It functions in a similar way to sharing using BitTorrent, although as yet there is no ‘swarming’ technology in place. In the image below, 96 other people are sharing the page.

This piece isn’t intended to be a guide on using Zeronet, others can help there. However, what piqued our interest is what appears to be the very first torrent site to appear on the Zeronet network. It’s not exactly clear how long ‘Play’ has been in development but its existence has been made known in the past few hours.

‘Play’ is accessed via a Zeronet URL which only works if the Zeronet software is installed. Once on the site it is indistinguishable from any other similar site working on a central server. The site doesn’t offer a tracker (that would create new problems) but instead serves magnet links sourced from RARBG.

As one might expect, the site is the usual fare with the latest movies presented in varying qualities, along with YouTube trailer links where applicable.

As a straightforward website ‘Play’ wouldn’t get a mention here but the way it’s delivered to users is somewhat exciting, especially since this is what The Pirate Bay and indeed BitTorrent Inc.’s Project Maelstrom has been promising for some time. However, before users get too excited, there are some caveats.

While Zeronet sites won’t get taken down as long as someone is ‘seeding’ them, the Zeronet website-serving network is not anonymous. That means that users’ IP addresses are public unless they choose the Tor option or double up with a VPN. Additionally, torrent transfers function in an identical fashion to any other site and are just as public as they ever were.

From a legal perspective Zeronet itself has no issues but of course a site like Play infringes on copyright law just as any other similar site would, even if its operators can remain anonymous. Interestingly though, while someone, somewhere has created Play, its users (not a server company) are now effectively hosting it via their local machines. This raises questions of liability for torrent site hosting in the future.

Finally, Zeronet also offers users a one-click solution to site cloning. This sounds like it might be a real headache for copyright holders but it could also be an equally large headache for the Internet’s spam department. Time will tell how that will play out.

Zeronet’s homepage can be found here.

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