Author: Andy

After many years of virtual stagnation on the development front, during the summer of 2014 The Pirate Bay announced the launch of a new site.

Designed especially for mobile devices, TheMobileBay.org provided a new and clean interface rather than a simply scaled-down version of its existing site.

As can be seen in the image below, the new layout got rid of the clutter and made the site much more easy to navigate on phones and tablets.

The new vs. old mobile look

Since the launch of TheMobileBay.org 18 months ago users of mobile devices have been automatically diverted to this special version of The Pirate Bay. However, this week those diversions faltered and then completely broke down. The reason, once again, is that The Pirate Bay has lost yet another domain.

Like several other Pirate Bay domains in recent months, TheMobileBay.org has been suspended by its registrar. Back in December the site’s .LA, .GD, .MN and .VG domains were all listed as “clienthold” by registrar 1API GmbH, and now TheMobileBay.org has suffered the same fate.

As a result of these fresh domain troubles The Pirate Bay is currently not reachable by visiting TheMobileBay.org. Additionally, those visiting ThePirateBay.se can’t access it either, unless they instruct their browsers to access the desktop version of the site instead. Sadly even this has its drawbacks as it’s the old, mobile-unfriendly version of the site that loads.

While mobile users of the site will be variously denied access to the site or simply disappointed by a return to the old layout, the loss of TheMobileBay.org domain will be felt strongly in the UK. For reasons that remain unclear, since its launch The Mobile Bay has not been blocked by UK ISPs, meaning that users have been able to evade the High Court blockade won by rightsholders in 2013.

Considering The Pirate Bay’s standing it’s likely that a copyright holder complaint triggered the suspension of The Mobile Bay, but that hasn’t been officially confirmed.

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

When perusing various file-sharing sites throughout the year it’s not uncommon to find posts which inquire when users can expect to find DVD screener copies of brand new films for illegal download.

Indeed, the practice is so common these days that when one types “when do dv” into Google the search engine helpfully autocompletes the question.

The point is that the leaking of DVD screeners online every year is all but guaranteed and there doesn’t appear to be a single thing that Hollywood can do about it. This past Christmas leaks descended into a massive free-for-all, prompting angry industry executives to slam the attacks on their industry.

So assuming that most or all Hollywood executives really do believe that screener leaks aren’t free promotion, why after years of unrelenting leaks isn’t their security much better?

Well, according to Variety it seems like a straightforward case of failing to adapt to the digital age, topped off with a fear of – wait for it – piracy.

The most obvious approach would be to stop sending out physical discs to Oscar voters, granting them access to streaming copies instead. However, according to the report studio executives are worried that providing multiple secure digital video delivery platforms will lead to confusion and even stop people from voting.

Perhaps the great irony here is that in comparison pirates have to jump through many hoops to get hold of leaked screeners online yet are able to do so in their millions, despite it not being part of their job. Viewing apathy is not part of the equation. Are awards voters really that disinterested in movies?

Apparently the MPAA is aware that forcing awards voters to use multiple video platforms could act as a deterrent to watching screeners so is reportedly working with an outside vendor to supply an app that will provide a single point of access.

Interestingly there is no such app available to the general public who are forced to subscribe to dozens of services if they want access to all movies.

But things get really bizarre when one reads about the discussions surrounding potential platforms for the distribution of digital screeners. Prime Focus Technologies offers a service called SecureScreener which it says eliminates the need for DVD copies.

“Have peace of mind with CLEAR’s Secure Player as it is unbreakable. It cleverly blocks any download attempt so you know your content is safe,” the company explains.

“And to top it, it offers high-quality viewing experience so your users don’t miss the DVD feel. No more wait for feedback – Access to information like who viewed, liked, shared, and downloaded your content at your fingertips, literally!”

The system even offers a double verification system involving a username and password combo backed up a special code sent to the designated viewer’s (voter’s) cell phone. But somewhat hilariously this is apparently too advanced for some awards voters.

“Some film reps are concerned that not all Academy voters have cell phones to receive text notification,” Variety reports.

But even for those that do, the studios are still concerned about how screeners will be viewed if delivered digitally.

Will voters watch the movie on a smartphone and lose the cinematic experience? will they watch on a tablet and miss out on a meticulously arranged soundtrack? One can hear Tarantino wringing his hands right now, torn between a pre-release of The Hateful Eight and an Ultra Panavision extravaganza being displayed on a 7″ tablet.

So while millions of Hollywood’s customers are yearning for content to be delivered to them digitally in every possible way, the studios appear to be hamstrung by fears that industry voters – the people one might hope are on the cutting edge – can’t be universally trusted with anything more advanced than a DVD.

Of course, times will eventually change and following the DVD screener debacle of 2015, a greater urgency is definitely required to avoid a repeat in 2016/17 and beyond. Whatever happens though, it’s likely that the DVD screener has a few more years in it yet. And that will be great news for pirates.

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

One only has to look at Google’s Transparency Report to see how many apparently unauthorized music services exist on the web today. They’re a thorn in the sides of rightsholders and the DMCA notices sent out because of them run into the tens of millions.

Most are relatively thoughtless affairs that pull in music from anywhere it’s available, much of it from Russia – unlicensed and very much illegal. While free to access, the majority of unofficial sites don’t spend much time over user experience. The same cannot be said of a new service just launched out of Spain.

When one first accesses Wefre.com the site has an immediately familiar feel and it’s clear from the start that Spotify is its inspiration. One also gets the feeling that this service is going to cause disruption so think of this piece as less of a review and more of heads-up of things to come.

Wefre requires users to open an account but that’s as simple as providing a username and email address which at the time of writing isn’t checked as being valid. Nevertheless, the value of signing up becomes clear when testing Wefre out.

The first thing that becomes evident is the similarity between Wefre’s web-based interface and Spotify’s desktop software. Eschewing the black theme for an off-white affair, Wefre’s layout is extremely clear. For users of Spotify (who of course won’t need the service) it feels like home from home.

Wefre provides convenient links for popular albums, new releases, top 50 tracks and even popular genres, which unlike other third-party services makes it excellent for music discovery.

Just like with Spotify, skipping around tracks, selecting new albums and finding new content from related artists is a pretty seamless experience. Not only is the service lightning fast (yes, as quick as Spotify) it’s remarkably good to look at too.

Where many wannabe-Spotify services break down is their lack of support for doing anything creative with individual tracks beyond simply playing them. Wefre does not fall into the same trap. As can be seen in the image below, it offers a similar range of options to Spotify and even allows people to email their friends with links to a track.

Of course, it hasn’t been long since we first reported on Aurous, the now defunct but similar service that was battered into submission by the RIAA. However, while Aurous was criticized for utilizing pirate music from unauthorized sources in the East, Wefre claims its content is from entirely legal sources.

Behind the scenes Wefre appears to be a clever YouTube / Spotify mashup which utilizes the APIs officially made available by both companies to create its own take on music presentation. According to Felix Ramallo at Infotechnology.com, Wefre pulls music tracks from YouTube while utilizing the musical catalog of Spotify.

Wefre creator Boris Vera, who appears to be based in Tenerife, one of the Spanish Canary Islands, says his service is all above-board.

“YouTube and Spotify offer APIs for developers. We created Wefre fulfilling their terms,” he explains.

“We offer legal services and we operate correctly under the terms of use. When you click on a song a YouTube video is actually playing in the background and thanks to the Spotify API for developers we can organize music, so Wefre does not store a single song,” he explains.

While Wefre currently works through a browser, the service has iOS and Android apps under development which are subject to a Kickstarter campaign. “Wefre is a new completely free music streaming service. All the music from your favorite artists on-demand and ad-free,” it reads.

Wefre doesn’t appear to have made the big mistakes Aurous did early on but history tells us that a service that works as well as this one is likely to attract the negative attentions of the labels. Indeed, the fact that Wefre’s music comes from YouTube probably won’t help it either. In the Aurous case, the RIAA said the following about content pulled from YouTube and Soundcloud.

“Plaintiffs have not authorized the streaming or downloading (copying) of their recorded music from websites except pursuant to agreements that control the terms on which such works are made available,” the RIAA said.

“Defendants can only cause such downloads to occur by circumventing the protections such sites have against such downloading and violating the sites’ terms of service that expressly prohibit such conduct.”

Whether the Wefre package as a whole will be enough to prompt the labels into action remains to be seen, but if it looks like Spotify and works like Spotify, it’s likely the labels will feel entitled to a piece of the action. We almost certainly haven’t heard the last of this one.

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

In common with many countries around Europe, Russia believes that the way to bring Internet piracy to its knees is to block pirate sites at the ISP level. The theory is that Internet users will get tired of trying to circumvent blockades and will begin to spend money on movies and music instead.

In addition to targeting individual URLs indexing specific content, Russia is now engaged in so-called “eternal blockades”, the blocking of allegedly infringing websites at the ISP level on a permanent basis. Last week telecoms watchdog Roskomnadzor announced the blocking of 13 sites (listed below), including the popular RuTor.org tracker.

But yesterday came the big one, with authorities confirming the permanent blockade of torrent site giant RuTracker. The huge site has experienced problems with rightsholders for many years, but during the past few months things have been slowly coming to a head.

Last October, with a permanent ban looming on the horizon, the site mulled the deletion of several hundred thousand torrents to pacify rightsholders. However, after polling its members the site decided to leave the torrents in place and accept the blockade.

Following separate action from book publishers and music labels including a subsidiary of Warner, a Moscow City Court order to permanently block the site came into force on January 12 and was carried out yesterday. But rather than the effect rightsholders had hoped for, the action signals the start of a new era for the site.

While undoubtedly a huge index of infringing content, RuTracker has long-standing agreements in place with many copyright holders to keep certain content off the site. This kept the content creators happy while easing some of the legal pressure from the tracker. However, RuTracker says that since they are now being completely blocked, the gloves are coming off.

“For many years our tracker has worked with rightsholders, in this respect many of their representatives were present on the site. They were free to cover all distribution protected under copyright law. In this regard, many releases were either banned or not recommended for distribution,” a staff member explained yesterday.

“But today we put an end to these agreements, as users of the Russian Federation are now blocked from accessing our tracker. Therefore rights holders did not want to continue their cooperation, which allows us to do more and not adhere to it.”

As a result, special accounts given to rightsholders to enable them to swiftly remove content have been downgraded to standard user status and members are now being informed to share whatever they like.

In the past this would’ve meant that only Russians would have greater access to content, but RuTracker has also opened up its previously members-only site to the general public. While English speakers still need Google translate to navigate the site, ominously it is also testing an English language version.

Only making matters worse is that RuTracker has removed the so-called ‘private flag’ from its torrents. This means that the site’s hundreds of thousands of active torrents should now be accessible via BitTorrent’s Distributed Hash Table (DHT), which opens up the content to a worldwide audience.

Of course, all of this is of limited use if people can’t access the site. As expected, however, people are already working hard to circumvent the blockades. While VPNs and proxies do the trick, a new site called Dostup-rutracker.org now provides free plugins for all major browsers which transparently bypass the ISP bans.

And so far things are looking promising for the site. According to the owner of the site’s former domain, who says that he’s now just a regular user on RuTracker, as of yesterday more than half of the site’s users had already circumvented the blocks.

Only time will tell whether RuTracker will grow into an international giant, but it’s fair to say that thus far the ISP blockade has had very little success, quite the opposite in fact.

Sites permanently blocked during the past week

http://www.rutracker.org
http://www.bobfilm.net
http://www.dream-film.net
http://www.kinokubik.com
http://www.kinozal.tv
http://www.kinobolt.ru
http://www.rutor.org
http://www.seedoff.net
http://www.torrentor.net
http://www.tushkan.net
http://www.tvserial-online.net
http://www.wood-film.ru
http://www.kinovo.tv
http://bigcinema.tv

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

As champions of less restrictive copyright law and advocates of greater online freedoms and privacy, the Pirate Party has stamped its mark on the online space in recent years.

As a niche political movement it has often taken a guerrilla approach to its activism, with strategies often designed to provoke a fierce response from perceived enemies.

In July 2011, the Czech division of the party did just that with a brave move designed to stir up sentiments against the Czech Anti-Piracy Union who had targeted a 16-year-old accused of posting links to infringing material on his website

Under the slogan “Linking is not a Crime” the Czech Pirate Party launched its own movie download site. Tipnafilm.cz had an attractive layout with links to content plus movie covers, embedded trailers, and links to reviews on sites such as iMDb. A second site, Piratskefilmy.cz, carried 20,000 links to more than 5,800 movies.

“We challenge the Anti-Piracy Union to stop bullying the under-aged and to aim its preposterous claims at the Pirate Party,” the pirates said.

Declaring “open war” on the anti-piracy outfit, the Czech pirates later launched TV focused site Sledujuserialy.cz (I Watch TV Series). With the previous two sites faded away, it is this site that has finally elicited the response the pirates had longed hoped for.

“A landmark political trial for Czech Internet is about to take place!” the party has just announced.

“On Thursday 21st January, the Czech pirate party was officially notified that it will be prosecuted in criminal court. The reason is their long-term political campaign “Linking is Not a Crime” in which the party ran a non-commerical website ‘sledujuserialy.cz’ highlighting an absurd interpretation of copyright monopoly law with regard to the Internet.”

Although it has taken more than four years to come to fruition, it appears the pirates’ plan progressed as predicted. Their taunting of the Czech Anti-Piracy Union resulted in the anti-piracy group filing a complaint with the police. The police are now prosecuting the Pirate Party over their TV piracy site.

Unusually for torrent site operators, the Pirate Party say they are glad they’re in trouble with the law.

“[The Pirate Party] welcomes the criminal case. Until now, the Czech Anti-Piracy Union has targeted only randomly chosen individuals with its bullying. The victims were in an unfair position as they faced expensive lawyers of lobby organisations which push the current repressive copyright monopoly regime. This time it’s different,” Czech Pirate Party chairman Lukáš Černohorský explains.

“Instead of teenagers, copyright industry lobbyists are now dealing with a political party which didn’t run the website for money but because of our conviction that linking is not and should not be a crime.”

The Party says it has been forced to take this action to fight the persecution of linking online, adding that sites including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube don’t face any action for doing the same, even though they operate their sites for-profit.

That being said, it’s unclear how Czech copyright law will draw a line between the party’s hand-curated TV show download site and user-generated content sites like YouTube, but finding out is clearly one of the party’s aims.

“Our goal is to change the copyright monopoly law so that people are not fined millions for sharing culture with their friends. However, until we achieve that, we will fight in courts over interpretation and enforcement of the law,” Černohorský concludes.

The Party says that in the coming days it will call on all organizations who care about the future of the Internet to join them in a massive demonstration against oppressive copyright regimes and recent proposals for increased online censorship and surveillance.

Pirate parties have a long history of supporting pirate sites, particularly The Pirate Bay.

At times the Swedish Pirate Party famously hosted parts of The Pirate Bay’s infrastructure which put them on a collision course with authorities there. Over in the UK, the local Pirate party was threatened with a lawsuit from the music industry after refusing to take down its Pirate Bay proxy service. It eventually complied in December 2012.

Most recently, last year the Norwegian Pirate Party announced its own DNS service to bypass ISP censorship of The Pirate Bay.

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

During the past couple of years there has been a steady wave of reports claiming that so-called ‘pirate’ sites are some of the worst offenders when it comes to hoisting junk, malware and viruses upon their users.

Usually commissioned or funded by entertainment industry groups, these reports often lead to a sense of déjà vu, with phrases such as “content theft” and “organized crime” painting an apocalyptic vision for anyone daring to use a torrent or streaming portal.

The stark warnings are somewhat ironic. As the movie, music and software industries continue their crusade to have mainstream advertisers boycott any site they have not authorized, file-sharing sites are increasingly forced into the advertising backwaters. This means that the chances of bad ads appearing in front of users is increasing.

Although it will never be said in public, anti-piracy groups are well aware of the importance of diminishing the user experience on pirate sites. If they’re difficult to access (web-blocking) and risky to use (dodgy ads), the free content on offer might not be so attractive. It’s cynical and also makes somewhat of a mockery of their efforts to ‘warn’ about the dangers of using pirate sites.

But as with all things in life the proof of the pudding is in the eating and there are millions of file-sharers gobbling up content, enjoying the experience, not falling ill, and returning to sites day after day. That in itself suggests that the catastrophic impact suggested in various reports isn’t playing out in the real world.

However, it would be irresponsible to suggest that these industry reports are all absolute nonsense. While admittedly completely self-serving, several have raised very good points about the dubious quality of advertising appearing on various ‘pirate’ portals.

It’s a bitter pill but it needs to be said. While there are thousands that don’t, there are large numbers of pirate sites that fall way below the standards those who pay their bills deserve. Why some site operators sink to these levels isn’t always clear, but aggressive redirects, misleading advertising, fake virus warnings and malware are always unacceptable.

For some reason streaming sites seem to be among the main offenders and in the worst case scenarios they bombard the user with an endless stream of dubious advertising techniques that can only be of major annoyance to their visitors.While acknowledging the return they get from these ads is minimal (hence their volume), from a business perspective it seems baffling to use customers as things to be beaten into submission.

Unless sites really don’t care whether a user comes back again tomorrow or not, it makes absolutely no sense to treat them and their machines with disrespect. Of course, some popups, ‘direct download’ buttons and affiliate sponsors are to be expected, but wouldn’t it be better to at least maintain some level of sanity?

Of course, one response to aggressive advertising is for users to become more aware of their ad blocking options. As a result they then join the growing ranks of users who not only use all the facilities of pirate sites without contributing a dime to their upkeep, but feel entirely justified in doing so. This raises another irony.

Some might question whether we should be surprised that people who obtain movies and music for free don’t want to contribute financially to pirate sites. But human nature is not that straightforward. There are droves of people who are not only happy to contribute to the health of a pirate site, but do so while supporting the likes of Netflix, Spotify and Steam.

In the end and when the entertainment industries finally sort themselves out, it will be a battle between those who treat their customers properly and those who have no idea. Release windowing expensive content over geo-blocked services is annoying, no doubt, but pirate sites laden with junk aren’t the solution.

Both sides need to treat their users with respect to maintain or increase market share. Let battle commence.

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

Netflix has just announced its expansion into 130 more countries around the globe but the company’s penetration hasn’t always been so deep. Millions of potential customers outside the United States have had to wait for the service to land on their shores to become a customer – well that was the theory at least.

An open secret for years and common knowledge during the past couple of weeks, it’s possible – and easy – to be a customer of Netflix in one country and gain access to it from another.

Before the service landed on their shores last year this meant that Australians with no official access to the service have been able to view using a VPN. Equally, users with limited local libraries have been able to fool Netflix into thinking they’re American – with all the riches that provides.

Last week Netflix announced that it had begun cracking down on these content-tourists (or VPN pirates as they’re sometimes called) in order to appease rightsholders but for those who can still beat the system, what are they enjoying? The answer to that question and more can be found by visiting the ‘unofficial Netflix online Global Search’ or uNoGS for short.

uNoGS is essentially a searchable database which allows users to see which content is available on Netflix in any given area in the world. For instance, when Netflix unceremoniously curtailed my viewing of Donnie Brasco in the UK earlier this month, a search on uNoGS revealed the movie was still on the service and accessible from 22 other countries.

This means that by using a VPN to switch countries I was able to continue viewing, but uNoGS actually goes a step further by providing details on which VPN, proxy or DNS providers can provide access on a movie-by-movie basis.

For example, selecting TorGuard reveals options in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

Selecting Private Internet Access reveals five usable servers located in Finland, France, Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland. Since the language is also displayed by uNoGS, those seeking English audio are able to rule out the second and fourth options.

Interested by the project, TorrentFreak caught up with uNoGS operator Brian to find out more about his baby.

“uNoGS is very much a one man show juggled as a hobby between work and family life. I initially built the site just for myself because the few sites that were providing a service like this were extremely limited in terms of search functionality,” Brian says.

“I wanted to be able to see what was available in every country, when it was added, when it was supposed to expire and when it actually expired. Once I completed the initial build for myself I decided to share it with everyone and uNoGS went live in early May 2015.”

Brian says the site’s aim is to provide an overview of what’s on in every country served by Netflix globally and to provide users with advanced search functionality to find titles by name as well as a variety of specific parameters. In addition to dates of availability, uNoGS provides details on audio tracks and subtitling. It also offers TV series data plus iMDb and Rotten Tomatoes listings.

Also available are total movie and TV show counts for each country. Found here, the table reveals the United States as the best Netflix region by far, with ‘French Southern Territories’ the most under-served.

In total, uNoGS indexes content available on Netflix in 243 territories and updates the same on a daily basis, but Brian suggests that in an ideal world his service wouldn’t be needed.

“Traditional media outlets like cable, satellite and terrestrial tv are dead but they haven’t fully realized this yet. Most of them are trying to hang on to their lucrative commercial models which they love but consumers hate,” he explains.

“At the moment these different providers have enough money to buy up the rights to a variety of shows making the geo-restrictions necessary. In time, this will change as more and more viewers go to disruptive services which charge a fair monthly fee and allow users to watch titles on their own terms. With the moves that Netflix is currently making, hopefully these changes will come sooner rather than later.”

In the meantime Netflix is in the clutches of copyright holders who it admits trying to appease with its recent VPN clampdown. TorrentFreak began speaking with uNoGS early January before that particular news broke but in our conversations back then, Brian made an accurate prediction.

“In the future with the advent of tools like Smartflix and search engines like uNoGS, I think [region switching] will become more mainstream and eventually upset the content providers enough to push Netflix to take action. I think this will be a shame but most likely inevitable,” he correctly concluded.

“Overall I think the VPN/DNS switchers are a good thing and most likely keep people from obtaining media through less official methods.”

uNoGS can be found here, complete with API access for those interested.

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

Over the past several years few individuals operating in the anti-piracy space have received more press than Henrik Pontén. Loved by rights-holders and hated by many pirates in equal measures, Pontén has been a thorn in the side of dozens of file-sharing sites.

The chief lawyer of Rights Alliance, which counts major Hollywood studios among its members, Pontén has definitely made a unique mark on file-sharing history.

Deeply involved in the prosecution of The Pirate Bay, Pontén made many enemies. In 2009 a bizarre (presumed ‘pirate’) retaliation made headlines when his name was officially changed with Swedish authorities without his knowledge. To his disappointment, Pirate Pontén was born.

“The pirate movement have previously tried threats and when that doesn’t work, they do this,” Pontén said at the time.

In a new interview with IDG more than six years on, the anti-piracy chief acknowledges that his work has not always proven popular with the masses.

“A friend once said that if you want to upset anyone you should write about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, wolf hunting or us,” Pontén says of Rights Alliance (formerly Antipiratbyrån).

Popularity has rarely appeared to been one of Pontén’s aims but somehow he has retained his dry humor. In contacts with TF over the years he’s always been polite and has often responded to our requests for comment with the tongue-in-cheek sign off “Sharing is Caring.”

But underneath the dry exterior is a man dedicated to his cause, one who has outlived many of the sites he’s targeted over the years. Not all have crumbled in his wake (not least The Pirate Bay), but the numbers are on the wane, he says.

“The trend is that the number of illegal services is decreasing. Two years ago, we looked at some 20 Swedish players, now it’s down to a few. They are distinctly uninterested in ceasing their operations because they earn good money from them,” Pontén says.

According to the anti-piracy veteran Rights Alliance contacts pirate sites before reporting them to the police. That gives them the chance to close down their operations before things get heavy, including raids, trials, potential prison sentences and millions in damages.

Pontén says that around half accept the offer to close. A few more stop after lawsuits are filed. Others, clearly, are much more persistent.

In the IDG interview Pontén is confronted with the fact that there have been a lot of court cases in Sweden against sites either run as hobby projects or generating marginal revenues. He counters by saying there is often a lag of several years between the filing of complaints and a prosecution.

Today, however, he suggests there are no more small fry in his home country.

“Of the services that remain in Sweden today, all are explicitly commercial and earn a lot of money,” he says.

“It’s a bit like the Internet in general. There are a few major players who are taking more and more space. The small sites disappear after a while,” Pontén notes.

Pontén is currently involved in a case against the operator of SwePiracy, a site that was first raided in 2012. The 24-year-old is accused of ignoring Rights Alliance warnings to close down and now faces claims for almost $3 million in damages from companies including Disney.

Also on the horizon lies the prosecution of SweFilmer, a site that was raided by police last summer. The site’s admin later revealed he’d been detained by police for four days.

Pontén says that those who believe that pirate sites are run by those who simply want to make content available for free will be surprised when they discover the commercial nature of that particular site.

“It will become clear,” he concludes.

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

During the past several days the issue of content geo-blocking has become a global hot potato after Netflix announced renewed efforts to thwart users who attempt to bypass its content-locking mechanisms.

Starting immediately, subscribers who attempt to access the Netflix service with a VPN or proxy in order to gain access to libraries in other regions will face additional roadblocks. The measures have been widely criticized by both VPN companies and consumers.

But while this kind of effort to protect copyright holders and licensing agreements is probably legal now, over in Europe a conflicting scenario is playing out via the European Commission.

Following the adoption last March of a new Digital Single Market Strategy which aims to improve consumer access to digital services and goods, the Commission presented plans to abolish geo-blocking and filtering restrictions across EU member states.

Describing geo-blocking as a “discriminatory practice used for commercial reasons” the Commission said that users should be allowed to access digital content services like Netflix all across Europe, no matter where they are.

In response to the Commission’s proposals the UK government has just launched a public consultation, aiming to gauge the public’s response to the idea of a geo-blocking ban in advance of any final decision by the EU.

“The European Commission has recently published draft legislation that is intended to ensure that all digital services are portable within the European Union,” the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) announced.

“This would mean that a person who lives in the UK, and who subscribes to a digital content service there, would be able to be confident they can continue to access that service when they are elsewhere in the EU, provided they have the right level of internet connection.”

The UK government itself is strongly in favor of the EU’s proposals and believes that both consumers and content providers will benefit from legislative change.

“The Government supports cross-border portability, and the Prime Minister welcomed these proposals on the day of their launch. We will now be working with other European partners to negotiate the detail of the Regulations so that they deliver the best outcome for businesses and consumers,” the IPO writes.

The proposals suggest changes to copyright law aimed at smoothing the way for providers such as Netflix to make subscriptions available in other EU countries by allowing them to apply the laws of the subscriber’s home territory.

“It is currently difficult to provide portability for some types of content because of territorial copyright agreements which govern where services can be accessed,” the IPO notes.

The government says that in advance of negotiations on the text between EU Members States it is seeking views from both businesses and consumers on the costs and benefits of the proposals, alongside suggestions of how the language of the legislation could be improved.

“In particular, we are seeking views from service providers, rights holder organizations, and consumers, in order to better understand how the proposals will affect them,” the IPO says.

The aim is to introduce content portability sometime in 2017 but those interested in contributing to the process need to be quick. The government’s consultation is effective immediately and will end on February 12, 2016.

Those interested in getting their voices heard can find further details here.

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

Of all piracy related news, a January 2015 report out of Norway gave the strongest indication yet that the key to eliminating piracy is a strong legal offering.

Following a survey carried out by music group IFPI it was revealed that just 4% of under 30-year-olds were still using illegal file-sharing platforms to obtain music, with 80% using legal streaming platforms instead.

Still hamstrung by inconvenient release windowing, the movie industry could only look on while wondering how to solve its own piracy problems. In March 2015 its response arrived, with the raiding of popular local unauthorized movie site Norskfilm.

The site first appeared on the radar of anti-piracy group Rights Alliance (Rettighetsalliansen) during 2014 and soon became the subject of a criminal investigation. During a subsequent raid carried out by Vestfold Police a 20-year-old man was arrested. He was charged with copyright infringement offenses including making available more than a thousand movies and TV shows and downloading hundreds of titles from The Pirate Bay.

“This is the first time we have succeeded in halting a page operated from Norway,” revealed Rights Alliance chief Willy Johansen.

The importance of the subsequent prosecution by companies including Warner Bros, Fox Paramount, Universal, Sony and Disney couldn’t be understated since the outcome would draw a line in the sand for other would-be pirates.

Together the studios went tough by demanding six months in jail plus more than $93,000 in damages.

But despite agreeing that the main had illegally made available at least 1,200 films and TV shows, downloaded around 700 from The Pirate Bay and then made them available to the public, the ruling from Tønsberg District Court falls far short of those demands.

According to information distributed to its members yesterday, Rights Alliance said that the Court handed the now 21-year-old a six month suspended sentence and ordered him to pay around $28,000.

“The illegal proliferation of films via the Internet has gradually degenerated to become a significant problem for the industry,” the ruling reads.

“The business is helping to undermine both the production of films and the profitability of licensees and others that are related to the legal market.”

While falling short of the studios’ demands, the sentence is still being described as the toughest ever handed out for intellectual property infringement in Norway.

“Although we only got a fraction of what we asked for, I doubt that we will appeal the ruling,” Secretary General Willy Johansen told Aftenposten.

“Had he been ordered to pay compensation for our losses for anyone who had downloaded those films illegally it would’ve amounted to several tens of millions. Nevertheless, [$28,000] is the highest amount someone has been sentenced to.”

The record (but comparatively light) sentence was welcomed by the former pirate site admin’s lawyer.

“[My client] had been very concerned that he could go to prison, it has probably been the biggest source of strain because he is so young,” explained Nikolai Riise. “In addition, the claim for damages had been of considerable size, so it’s a relief for him that requirement is so significantly reduced.”

While the studios didn’t get everything they asked for the man now has a criminal record, meaning that the way has been paved for others considering embarking on the same kind of activity. For Rights Alliance the fight continues and the next target is already lined up.

“Now we are working towards stopping the Popcorn Time service, which automatically shares a movie you download on PC or mobile with all your contacts,” Johansen concludes.

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