Author: Andy

Every time a major torrent site goes down, millions of people mourn the loss. Last week, when the owner of KickassTorrents was arrested in Poland, was no exception.

Following events like these, several repeat questions come to the forefront. Will the site come back? Will there be a replacement? How can other torrent sites avoid the same fate?

While the first two questions mostly originate from users, the latter is perhaps the most important in terms of the torrent scene in general. After all, if people don’t learn from history, how can they stop it repeating itself? And if it does indeed repeat, how much more damage can the scene take?

In response to the KAT shutdown, this week Peter Sunde called for action. Speaking on the Steal This Show podcast, the Pirate Bay co-founder said that innovation, decentralization, and cooperation is needed to safeguard the future of piracy.

“If one of the big sites goes down a lot of smaller sites are hit as well because they are just a copy of the original database. We need lots of sites that federate all the data instead of having to depend on the higher-ups,” Sunde said.

But just how likely is it that Sunde’s dream will come true? To find out, TorrentFreak spoke with some large and long-standing smaller players in the torrent scene.

The operator of one major site outlined many perceived weaknesses in the way that sites operate and provided some interesting thoughts on how these issues might be fixed. Interestingly, he doesn’t believe that decentralization is the key, instead preferring a “network-over-network” model for both server operation and downloads.

“Decentralization is not the key here. A network-over-network is. Decentralization means no back-updates and [issues with advertising],” he explains.

“Instead, imagine a private network running on the normal internet. You connect to a node, which joins you into a VPN-like network. Like TOR, but you don’t actually use the users to push the traffic.”

The site operator also went into considerable detail about other aspects, particularly in respect of preserving the security of users with a similar “network-over-network” model. However, overcoming technical issues doesn’t appear to be the main stumbling block. Instead, there’s a problem with cooperation.

“You have to understand that torrents are no longer the answer to these type of threats. Sure you can upgrade everything related to torrents to a more secure and better way of usage by promoting to users how they should use you through your new type of network etc, but at some point the protocol should upgrade,” he says.

“However, unless there is an agreement from at least three major sites, none of the requirements to push this new system to enough users will be done. There is currently no agreement to do anything between any torrent site.”

And it appears that even in the wake of KAT’s demise, there is still no momentum to innovate.

“[The major sites] are not interested in building a non-raidable, permanent domain system for users. They are not interested in a new protocol. No one works with anyone. They simply don’t care,” he says.

“Only [one major site, redacted] expressed some basic interest, but that’s only if all [other sites] agree. Which will never happen?”

In parallel, TF spoke with some site operators further down the chain but anyone hoping for some good news there will be pretty disappointed. While most agreed that doing something innovative would be a positive thing, most expressed a combination of pessimism and apathy.

“I find it hard enough to work with my own staff, so working with several other sites will not be possible I’m sure,” one said. “My site is a dictatorship (LOL) so I don’t need others outside telling me what I must do.”

Another admin, who operates two sites in the private scene, said that even building trust across sites will be an almost impossible task.

“It won’t happen. Why should any sysop trust [other sysops]? Who are they? I don’t know who they are. They don’t know who I am. And do you think that the bigger sites will agree to what smaller sites say? No. They will keep their [dominant] position and keep the best pie for themselves no matter what great system someone can make. I would. Who wouldn’t?” he said.

Generally, however, the overall feeling is that while there’s always a threat, things aren’t quite that bad yet. TF asked when people might feel compelled to do something dramatic. The answer seems to be “when people really have to.”

That notion is shared by Peter Sunde. He’s repeatedly called for the closure of The Pirate Bay to spark innovation but the closure of KickassTorrents alone (which was a bigger site) failed to have the desired effect. Maybe it will take another really big bombshell to finally provoke people into action but until then it seems unlikely that much will happen.

In the meantime, however, most of the people we spoke with were enthusiastic about the potential offered by Zeronet and IPFS. In the absence of any coordinated effort, perhaps the future is already here.

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

Over the past few years, transparency reports have become more and more common. Many big Internet companies publish them on an annual basis to keep the public informed about requests for user data or content takedowns.

One of the largest archives is maintained at Lumen Database and contains millions of DMCA notices received by companies including Google, Twitter, WordPress and Reddit.

Typically these notices contain the name of the complainant, the title of the content, the URLs where it can be found, and other non-sensitive information. Nevertheless, their publication is still unpopular with some.

In 2014, when Lumen was known as Chilling Effects, the archive was described as “repugnant” by then Copyright Alliance CEO Sandra Aistars.

“[T]he site unfairly maligns artists and creators using the legal process created by Section 512 [of the DMCA] as proponents of censorship,” she said.

While Lumen insists that is not the case, the project still has its enemies. Thanks to the transparency it brings, the work of anti-piracy outfits is made more public. This is an irritant to some, a notion that was made clear this week when US-based Remove Your Media took to Twitter to announce a new project.

As the tweet shows, Remove Your Media has launched its own transparency report which details the counter-notices filed by people it has filed DMCA notices against.

However, while Lumen Database goes to some lengths to protect the personal details (company names aside) of the people who send DMCA notices, Remove Your Media offers no such courtesy.

As can be seen from the screenshot above, the company publishes names, addresses, email address and even personal telephone/cellphone numbers of counter-notice senders. Given the tone of the tweet directed towards Lumen (transparency “works both ways now”), it seems reasonable to presume this is a deliberately provocative move.

What’s more, in practical terms the report is hopeless. The counter-notices published so far don’t contain any information that might allow the public to understand the complaints or whether they’re justified. It’s simply a list of names and other personal details plus a link to the copyright holder involved, no content details are provided.

TorrentFreak contacted Remove Your Media for comment on the aims of the just-launched database but received no response. However, some of those targeted by the company were happy to contribute.

“I run a website called fanart.tv which is community of fans submitting artwork for their favorite media,” site operator ‘Kode’ told TF.

“We are in effect offering free promotion for artists / tv shows / movies and making them look as good as possible.”

Kode told us that he believes the original complaint that triggered the counter-notice might be related to one of three YouTube videos that are already more than four years old.

“To be honest, it’s all a bit confusing as I only very vaguely remember submitting a YouTube counter-notice, and i’m pretty sure it wasn’t even this year. I’m trying to find out where I would see the details of it.”

Strangely, in correspondence with FanArt.tv around a year ago, Remove Your Media promised to whitelist the site from takedowns after acknowledging that there was no issue with its activities. Why the company has chosen to go back on its word now is a mystery.

But while Kode took his personal contact details being outed somewhat in his stride, others were not so relaxed.

“What the hell??? I never gave permission for this, and I doubt anyone else did either. This is illegal. I’ve reported the blog,” another told TF.

“I really don’t know [what this is about]. I have a YouTube account where I used to make [anime videos] years ago but there is no action against them. My account is fine. I don’t recognise the name [Remove Your Media]. As far as I’m concerned it’s BS. And even if they are taking action, my details should not have been published.”

TF is aware that Remove Your Media adopted an aggressive stance against people who sent false DMCA counter-notices in the past, so this move isn’t a complete surprise.

However, if the aim of the report really is transparency, the company should consider publishing its original DMCA complaint alongside a lightly redacted counter-notice. That will allow people to evaluate the credibility (or otherwise) of both claims.

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

November 2014 was one of the darkest months in the history of Sony Pictures. After being hacked by a group calling themselves the ‘Guardians of Peace’, masses of sensitive internal information was leaked online.

In addition to thousands of emails sent between key Sony staff, several movies were also leaked online. They included Still Alice, Mr Turner, Annie, Fury and the unreleased movie To Write Love on Her Arms.

This week, more than 18 months after the hack, the owner of the latter title sued Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions in a Florida court. In its complaint, Possibility Pictures says that Sony failed to meet contractual obligations which required the company to protect the movie from pirates.

Noting that Possibility spent $3.38m producing the movie, the company says that the hack resulted from an “entirely foreseeable and avoidable failure of internal security” following many earlier security incidents at Sony.

“SPE has been a longstanding and frequent target for hackers, but it apparently made a conscious and deliberate business decision to accept both the risk of losses and the actual losses of being hacked,” the complaint (first posted by HWR) reads.

Possibility says that due to Sony’s negligence the movie was leaked four months ahead of its official release. Then, due to its appearance on multiple pirate sites, the audience demand for the title was “destroyed”.

“While the total number of illegal downloads is unknown and unknowable, it is far more than likely [that the final tally is] many, many times the nearly 20,000 downloads recorded in just six days [following the leak],” the company adds.

Furthermore, in the wake of the leak, Sony allegedly “lost all interest” in promoting and marketing the movie and paid no further distribution revenues to Possibility beyond an initial $800,000 advance. As a result, Possibility claims that it is almost $2.6m out of pocket versus production costs.

To support its claim, Possibility highlights a section of its distribution agreement with Sony titled “Anti-Piracy Authorization”. The company says that the text shows that Sony was obliged to “protect the movie worldwide” using “appropriate technical measures or other techniques” to assist efforts to “remove, disable or otherwise prevent” unauthorized versions of the movie being pirated on the Internet.

No doubt the lawyers will argue over the meaning and scope of the section but thus far Sony is clear. In July 2016 discussions with Possibility Pictures, Sony insisted that it had “no obligation….to take any anti-piracy measures whatsoever.”

It’s certainly rare for a company like Sony to be accused of not doing enough to prevent piracy, so this case should be an interesting one to watch.

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

Seattle-based Getty Images is an American agency controlling an archive of dozens of millions of stock images. After paying the company an appropriate fee, customers are given the right to use Getty’s images in their own publications.

Like many copyright holders, Getty is extremely aggressive in protecting its rights. The company scans the web in search of instances where people have used its images without obtaining an appropriate license and pursues the alleged infringer for money.

What follows is a typical copyright-troll operation. Those supposedly using content without permission receive a scary letter from Getty agents warning that all kinds of terrible things might happen if Getty decides to take the case to court. All this can be avoided, however, if the supposed image pirate pays a cash settlement.

One such letter was received in December 2015 by the This is America! Foundation, a non-profit set up by Carol Highsmith, a long-established US-based photographer.

Penned by a company calling itself License Compliance Services (LCS) on behalf of Getty-affiliated Alamy, the letter got straight to the point.

“We have seen that an image or image(s) represented by Alamy has been used for online use by your company. According to Alamy’s records your company doesn’t have a valid license for use of the image(s),” the letter began.

The allegedly infringing image

“Although this infringement might have been unintentional, use of an image without a valid license is considered copyright infringement in violation of the Copyright Act, Title 17, United States Code. This copyright law entitles Alamy to seek compensation for any license infringement.”

The company demanded $120 to settle the dispute, which admittedly isn’t a huge amount. However, the case contained a series of devastating flaws, not least that the photograph in question was taken by Carol Highsmith herself. But it gets worse.

During a near half-hour telephone conversation with LCS, Highsmith began by explaining that she is the author of the image. However, she also revealed that she had donated this and thousands of other images to the Library of Congress and makes them available to the public to reproduce and display for free.

In the dying days of December 2015, Highsmith received confirmation from LCS that the case against her had been dropped. However, Getty and Alamy clearly hadn’t got the message. Amazingly, the companies were also making available more than 18,000 of Highsmith’s other photographs on their websites.

In a lawsuit filed July 25 in a New York District Court, Highsmith’s lawyers make their position clear.

“Nowhere on its website does Getty identify Ms. Highsmith as the sole author of the Highsmith Photos. Likewise, nowhere on its website does Getty identify Ms. Highsmith as the copyright owner of the work,” they write.

“Instead, Getty misrepresents the terms and conditions of using the Highsmith Photos by falsely claiming a user must buy a copyright license from Getty in order to have the right to use the Highsmith Photos.”

In some cases Getty was demanding $575 for use of just one of Highsmith’s images, despite the photographer making the content freely available to the public. Worse still, the company has also been sending out settlement demands to people who used the images legally on their websites.

“The Defendants have apparently misappropriated Ms. Highsmith’s generous gift to the American people,” the lawsuit reads.

“The Defendants are not only unlawfully charging licensing fees to people and organizations who were already authorized to reproduce and display the donated photographs for free, but are falsely and fraudulently holding themselves out as the exclusive copyright owner and threatening individuals and companies with copyright infringement lawsuits that the Defendants could not actually lawfully pursue.”

As a result, the tables are now turned, with Getty on the receiving end of a settlement demand. For using her images without permission, Highsmith says that Getty is liable for statutory damages of up to $468,875,000.

However, since Getty lost another copyright case (Morel v. Getty) within the last three years, Highsmith believes that the court has the power to treble the statutory damages. In this case up to a cool $1 billion.

Considering Getty’s holier-than-thou position when it comes to infringement, thousands will be cheering Highsmith on to victory. In the meantime, check out her work, it’s something really special.

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

With blockbusters including Avatar, Titanic, Terminator (1&2) and Aliens under his belt, James Cameron is without doubt one of the most successful and respected filmmakers of modern times.

While promoting the 30th anniversary of “Aliens” at Comic-Con last week, Cameron and his wife Gale Anne Hurd (who produced the movie) spoke to Variety on a number of movie industry issues.

Among them were the potentially intertwined topics of Napster co-founder Sean Parker’s Screening Room project and, of course, the thorny debate over Internet piracy.

While Screening Room sounds exciting to some, Cameron does not share the sentiment. He believes that having first-run movies in the home will stop people heading off to the cinema, the place where filmmakers can really showcase their art and take the fight to piracy.

“The biggest hedge against piracy is still the sanctity of the viewing experience in a movie theater — when it comes to movies,” he says.

“With ‘The Walking Dead’ or something like that, that’s not what you’re selling, but if we’re talking about movies and theatrical exhibition, keeping it great, making it a special experience, is still the biggest hedge against [piracy].”

Interestingly, Cameron also says that even if piracy somehow became legal and download speeds were drastically improved, viewing content outside the theatrical setting would still come up short.

“You’re still watching [movies] on a small platform, and it’s not that social experience,” he explains.

The notion that innovation is the key to dealing with piracy is a belief that Cameron has held for a number of years.

Back in 2010 the filmmaker was basking in the glory of Avatar making more than $2.6 billion at the box office, despite pirate copies being available online. The sci-fi movie later went on to become the most pirated movie of all time, and the most successful too.

But without offering something different, something unique, the movie industry could face the same threat as the music industry did, Cameron warns.

“Just collectively the industry needs to know if we fail at creating a premium immersive experience in the theater, then the Napster-like downloading phenomenon will destroy the industry,” Cameron says.

“You won’t be able to afford to make a movie like ‘Avatar’ or ‘Transformers’ or ‘Captain America’ or any of these big films. The economics will no longer make sense. And you simply won’t have them in any format or platform.”

But while Cameron talks innovation, his producer wife Gale Anne Hurd cautions that those sharing content online might be doing so with rose-tinted glasses.

“‘File Sharing’ sounds like a good thing. It’s file stealing,” she told Variety.

“I’ve just seen the figures — there’s money to be made in it and that’s not what people are thinking about. If they go to a torrent site or whatever, [the site’s operators] are making money through advertising.”

While that isn’t anything new to most file-sharers, Hurd also attacks the driving force behind many sharing platforms – the community’s idea that by uploading content to peers they’re spreading the enjoyment.

“So it’s not like, ‘Oh, your friend is helping you out’,” she says.

“There’s billions that people are making. The more that’s siphoned away because people are like, ‘Oh, I’ll just wait and I’ll stream it and I don’t even have to pay to stream it from a legitimate source,’ that is making it so much tougher on the exhibitors,” Hurd concludes.

Only time will tell whether projects such as Screening Room will be able to co-exist with the theatrical experience, but if done well both should be able to chip away at piracy – if the forecasts of both Cameron and Fanning are to be believed.

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

Copyright holders know that one of the most effective ways to hinder a file-sharing site is to attack its domain. As a result, various strategies have emerged to deprive owners of their use.

Those methods range from a basic complaint to registrars over incomplete or inaccurate WHOIS entries, to the more complex seizing of domains via the legal system.

The amount of time spent on enforcement is often comparable with the quality of the end results. WHOIS information is quickly fixed but domains ordered seized by a judge tend to stay that way forever.

Interestingly, a situation now faced by a leading file-hosting site might lie somewhere in the middle.

Openload is one of the most-used file-hosting platforms on the Internet, with more traffic than 4shared, Rapidgator and Uploaded. It has a worldwide Alexa rank of 402 and millions of visitors every week but yesterday a wrench was thrown into the works.

Around 18:22 Monday, Openload’s .co domain was suspended by its registrar Namecheap. As can be seen in the entry below, the reason is reported as “abuse”.

Namecheap passed our request for comment to its legal department who have yet to formally respond. However, we were able to contact the operator of Openload who confirmed that there had been an alleged breach of Namecheap’s Terms of Service.

“Namecheap suspended our domain for abuse according to their TOS,” Openload’s operator told TF. “Basically, they just said that they received too many DMCA reports.”

It is fairly unusual for a domain registrar to be targeted with so many copyright complaints since they are traditionally directed at the site itself, its webhost, or both. In this case, however, Namecheap appears to have been overwhelmed.

To get an idea of potential scale, in less than a year Google has received in excess of 450,000 DMCA complaints against Openload’s .co and .io domains.

The range of entertainment companies involved is broad, from the RIAA, Netflix and Warner Bros, to various Japanese anime distributors. Indeed, a large proportion of Openload’s traffic hails from Japan.

That being said, Openload says it is DMCA-compliant and processes complaints in a timely fashion.

“[The complaints received by Namecheap] were of course all taken down within 6-24 hours, but the number of notices is too much for them,” the site told us.

Copyright holders do have other options though. In addition to inviting complaints via a standard web form, Openload also offers a takedown tool.

“Openload is anxious to optimize the process of taking down files that violate copyright. Therefore Openload is offering a takedown API,” the site says.

But while takedowns are important, Openload does have a feature that tends to irritate copyright holders – paying uploaders for the amount of downloads they generate.

“We pay a fixed amount per 10,000 downloads/streams. Each payment amount per download/stream depends on the country the actions comes from,” the site explains on its rewards page.

Of course, YouTube also pays uploaders for the amount of traffic they generate but copyright holders have traditionally drawn a line in the sand when the same is offered by Openload-type hosting sites. The U.S. Department of Justice indictment against Megaupload famously paints a loosely similar scheme in a very dim light.

For now, Openload has lost control of its main Openload.co domain but the site is back up and running at Oload.co, a domain that was purchased last night following Namecheap’s suspension.

“Our site is reachable via oload.co which is actually a kind of read-only site. All features will return on the new domain during the next hours,” Openload’s operator concludes.

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

While countries like China have a dubious reputation for online censorship, millions of Internet users are now reluctantly becoming accustomed to sites being blocked on copyright grounds.

The practice is present in scattered countries across Europe but is most prevalent in the UK where more than a thousand sites are now being rendered inaccessible by regular means.

Most of the complaints originate from traditional copyright holders such as movie, TV show and recording labels, but a new threat has just emerged in Russia for the very first time.

Launched in 1999, Gazeta.ru is one of Russia’s leading Internet news resources and the 68th most-visited site overall. The platform enjoys an impressive 11 million readers each month but like many others it claims to have a problem with people republishing its content without permission.

Back in March, Gazeta published an article about tourism in Azerbaijan. The piece was popular with Gazeta readers but other commercial outfits were also attracted to the content. One of them, Story-media.ru, later reproduced the Gazeta article in full, without obtaining permission from the copyright holder.

In the world of news this is hardly a rare event. Many outlets find their articles being reproduced elsewhere on the Internet without permission and within seconds of publication. However, Gazeta decided that enough was enough and decided to fight back.

Using the same copyright complaints system that has been used countless times by movie studios and record labels since its 2013 introduction, Gazeta filed a case at the Moscow City Court.

Categorizing the tourism article as a “literary work” (literary works were added to Russia’s anti-piracy law last May), Gazeta owner Rambler & Co demanded action against Story-media.ru for the unauthorized reproduction of its copyright work.

According to Vedomosti, lawyers for Rambler & Co argued that the company “consistently fights the illegal placement of [copyrighted] content” and since the operators of Story-media.ru hide their identities (WHOIS is anonymous), the site should be blocked.

The Moscow City Court found the argument persuasive and in response ordered Russian ISPs to immediately block Story-media.ru. The court order describes the injunction as “an interim measure” designed to protect the “intellectual rights to the literary work.”

While plenty of torrent, streaming and linking sites have been blocked under the same process, this is believed to be the first use of Russia’s anti-piracy law to block a news resource following a complaint from a publisher over a written article.

Gazeta has previously taken action against a site that published an infographic without permission, resulting in the block of media site go2life.net, Vedomosti reports.

Story-media.ru now needs to respond to the Gazeta complaint but it is unclear whether it will do so. The site is currently offline.

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

In the early days of 2012, Kim Dotcom was the operator of arguably the most successful file-hosting site the world had ever seen. With 50 million daily users, Megaupload seemed to be an unstoppable juggernaut. Three weeks later it was all over.

As law enforcement officers raided the company and its operators in multiple locations, authorities were seeking to freeze Kim Dotcom’s considerable assets. Dozens of millions of dollars were seized in multiple jurisdictions, including locally in New Zealand.

Since then, Dotcom and his legal team have engaged in frequent battles to have funds released so that the businessman can go about his life. On the whole, the New Zealand courts have been receptive, and over the past several years have granted Dotcom access to considerable sums of money.

Now, however, one of his main legal adversaries has accused Dotcom of breaching the terms of the asset freeze imposed in 2012. Speaking in the New Zealand High Court, a lawyer for 20th Century Fox said that Dotcom had taken a loan from his lawyers on behalf of a trust for his children.

Speaking for the studio, lawyer Matt Sumpter said the NZ$220,000 (US$154,000) loan amounted to contempt of court, RadioNZ reports.

However, Kim Dotcom’s lawyer Ron Mansfield argued that the loan was a new asset that was not covered by the original freezing order and represented an increase in his clients’sassets, not a reduction.

Dotcom has been free to generate new income since the raid on his home but has been required to obtain permission to access seized assets. Last year he said that an allowance of US$15,000 per month was proving a struggle.

That led to a court awarding him $128K per month to live on, including $60K for mansion rent, $25,600 to cover staff and security, plus $11,300 for grocery and other expenses.

However, in recent months he left his famous mansion for a slightly more modest waterfront penthouse at Princes Wharf, a move which should have positively impacted his living expenses.

Since his departure, Dotcom’s rented mansion has since been sold for an undisclosed sum. The asking price was NZ$35m (US$24.4m).

But even with the mansion behind him, Dotcom’s battles continue.

Following an extradition hearing lasting several weeks, last December a New Zealand District Court judge ruled that Dotcom and his former Megaupload colleagues can be extradited to the United States to face charges of copyright infringement, conspiracy, money laundering and racketeering.

Dotcom immediately filed an appeal. That hearing is now scheduled to take place in just over a month’s time and is expected to last several weeks.

As always, Dotcom will put up a spirited fight but even a defeat at this stage won’t mark the end of the road.

“The appeal route is High Court, Court of Appeal, Supreme Court,” Dotcom previously told TF.

“If I lose, it goes to a decision by Minister of Justice, then to a High Court judicial review of the Minister’s decision. Then it’s the end of the road.”

The process will span extremely interesting times over in the United States, as the spotlight falls on the presidential election and the Obama administration which Dotcom blames for the demise of Megaupload. As a result, Dotcom is happy to stir things up, most recently in a series of Tweets this morning.

What if HC email server was hacked? What if all deleted HC emails are released on October 26th? Happy Birthday? https://t.co/KyDsMtvwuw

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) July 25, 2016

Dear Hillary, when you are retiring this year call Chris Dodd and thank him. #boomerang@HillaryClinton @MPAA

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) July 25, 2016

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

After years of being branded one of the world’s worst Internet piracy facilitators, last week social networking giant vKontakte took another important step towards making peace with rightsholders.

Parent company Mail.ru signed a licensing agreement with Universal Music and United Music Agency which will see music and video content appear legally on vKontakte, Classmates (Odnoklassniki) and My World, the three most-visited social networking sites in Russia.

With all copyright-related disputes now settled with Universal Music, the deal effectively transforms bitter conflict into cooperation, opening up opportunities for music sales development in a notoriously difficult region.

To find out more about the deal, this week TF caught up with VKontakte CEO Boris Dobrodeyev, who told us he’s optimistic for the future.

TF: Can you explain how the music licensing system with Universal Music will work?
 
BD: In accordance with the terms of the agreement, we cannot disclose the specific licensing provisions. However, we can say that the licensing agreements cover use of content on existing and planned new services on all of Mail.Ru Group’s social networks: VKontakte, Odnoklassniki and My World.

TF: What happens to the thousands/millions of ‘pirate’ tracks that are stored already on VKontakte? Do these effectively become legal or will Universal Music be supplying new content?
 
BD: The term “piracy” is not applicable to User Generated Content (UGC) services. Our position, which we have successfully defended in legal disputes, is that we do not distribute pirate content.

VKontakte’s content is user-generated, and so the rights holders’ requests were directed to them. From our side, we do everything that we can to protect the rights of the holders and remove content that violates their ownership rights.

Now that VKontake has signed the respective agreements with the major music companies, it is implementing substantial measures to identify the ownership of user content on the basis of the original files provided by the rights holders. VKontakte’s new services will be created using original content from the labels (including Warner, Sony and Universal).

Boris Dobrodeyev, VKontakte CEO

TF: Is VKontakte obliged to end all music piracy on its platform now, or just for the recoding labels it has struck a deal with?
 
BD: We would reiterate that the term “piracy” is not correct when talking about UGC services. Following significant efforts to license music content, the overwhelming majority of music by global artists on VK is completely legal.

With regard to music rights holders that have not yet signed an agreement with VK, at the very least they are able to use the existing procedures and technology in place to remove content and prevent it from being re-uploaded. It goes without saying that we also intend to sign corresponding agreements with these other rights holders in the near future.

We would add that many users and artists voluntarily upload their own music to VK in order to increase their popularity.

TF: Will fingerprinting technology or any other anti-piracy measures implemented?
 
BD: Yes, we intend to use a unique content identification system, which we developed in-house, and is similar to the technologies used in Audible Magic and Gracenote Content ID.

We will work together with the rights holders to continuously improve this technology in line with the development of the IT industry in general.

Moving forward

Of course, after years of copyright disputes vKontakte’s reputation in the United States has been somewhat sullied, largely due to rightsholders lobbying the United States Trade Representative to add the site to its Notorious Markets list. Dobrodeyev informs TF that it’s now time to move forward.

“We certainly hope that VKontakte will be removed from ‘piracy’ lists following the settlements and taking into account the enormous amount of work that the network has undertaken in this area,” he concludes.

Mail.ru and its subsidiaries now have licensing agreements in place with the three leading recording labels – Universal Music Group (UMG), Warner Music and Sony Music. Together they’ll hope to make inroads and indeed profit from a difficult and largely untapped Russian music market.

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

To the huge disappointment of millions of BitTorrent users, KickassTorrents disappeared this week following an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security in the United States.

With a huge hole now present at the top of the torrent landscape, other sites plus interested groups and individuals will be considering their options. Step up their game and take over the top slot? Cautiously maintain the status quo? Or pull out altogether…

Make no mistake, this is a game of great reward, matched only by the risk. If the DHS complaint is to be believed, Kickass made dozens of millions of euros, enough to tempt even the nerviest of individuals. But while that might attract some, is avoiding detection almost impossible these days?

The complaint against KAT shows that while not inevitable, it’s becoming increasingly difficult. It also shows that carelessness plays a huge part in undermining security and that mistakes made by others in the past are always worth paying attention to.

Servers in the United States

Perhaps most tellingly, in the first instance KAT failed to learn from the ‘mistakes’ made by Megaupload. While the cases are somewhat dissimilar, both entities chose to have a US presence for at least some of their servers. This allowed US authorities to get involved. Not a great start.

“[Since 2008], KAT has relied on a network of computer servers around the world to operate, including computer servers located in Chicago, Illinois,” the complaint against the site reads.

The Chicago server weren’t trivial either.

“According to a reverse DNS search conducted by the hosting company on or about May 5, 2015, that server was the mail client ‘mail.kat.ph’.”

Torrent site mail servers. In the United States. What could go possibly go wrong?

In a word? Everything. In January 2016, DHS obtained a search warrant and cloned the Chicago servers. Somewhat unsurprisingly this gifted investigating agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan (the same guy who infiltrated Silk Road) valuable information.

“I located multiple files that contained unique user information, access logs, and other information. These files include a file titled ‘passwd’ located in the ‘etc’ directory, which was last accessed on or about January 13, 2016, and which identified the users who had access to the operating system,” Der-Yeghiayan said.

Servers in Canada

KAT also ran several servers hosted with Montreal-based Netelligent Hosting Services. There too, KAT was vulnerable.

In response to a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty request, in April 2016 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police obtained business records associated with KAT’s account and made forensic images of the torrent site’s hard drives.

Why KAT chose Netelligent isn’t clear, but the site should have been aware that the hosting company would be forced to comply with law enforcement requests. After all, it had happened at least once before in a case involving Swedish torrent site, Sparvar.

Mistakes at the beginning

When pirate sites first launch, few admins expect them to become world leaders. If they did, they’d probably approach things a little differently at the start. In KAT’s case, alleged founder Artem Vaulin registered several of the site’s domains in his own name, information that was happily handed to the DHS by US-based hosting company GoDaddy.

Vaulin also used a Gmail account, operated by US-based Google. The complaint doesn’t explicitly say that Google handed over information, but it’s a distinct possibility. In any event, an email sent from that account in 2009 provided a helpful bridge to investigators.

“I changed my gmail. now it’s admin@kickasstorrents.com,” it read.

Forging further connections from his private email accounts to those operated from KAT, in 2012 Vaulin sent ‘test’ emails from KAT email addresses to his Apple address. This, HSI said, signaled the point that Vaulin began using KAT emails for business.

No time to relax, even socially

In addition to using an email account operated by US-based Apple, (in which HSI found Vaulin’s passport and driver’s license details, plus his banking info), the Ukranian also had an iTunes account.

Purchases he made there were logged by Apple, down to the IP address. Then, thanks to information provided by US-based Facebook (notice the recurring Stateside theme?), HSI were able to match that same IP address against a login to KAT’s Facebook page.

Anonymous Bitcoin – not quite

If the irony of the legitimate iTunes purchases didn’t quite hit the spot, the notion that Bitcoin could land someone in trouble should tick all the boxes. According to the complaint, US-based Bitcoin exchange Coinbase handed over information on Vaulin’s business to HSI.

“Records received from the bitcoin exchange company Coinbase revealed that the KAT Bitcoin Donation Address sent bitcoins it received to a user’s account maintained at Coinbase. This account was identified as belonging to Artem Vaulin located in Kharkov, Ukraine,” it reads.

Final thoughts

For a site that the US Government had always insisted was operating overseas, KickassTorrents clearly had a huge number of United States connections. This appears to have made the investigation much more simple than it would have been had the site and its owner had maintained a presence solely in Eastern Europe.

Why the site chose to maintain these connections despite the risks might never be answered, but history has shown us time and again that US-based sites are not only vulnerable but also open to the wrath of the US Government. With decades of prison time at stake, that is clearly bad news.

But for now at least, Vaulin is being detained in Poland, waiting to hear of his fate. Whether or not he’ll quickly be sent to the United States is unclear, but it seems unlikely that a massively prolonged Kim Dotcom-style extradition battle is on the agenda. A smaller one might be, however.

While the shutdown of KAT and the arrest of its owner came out of the blue, the writing has always been on the wall. The shutdown is just one of several momentous ‘pirate’ events in the past 18 months including the closure (and resurrection) of The Pirate Bay, the dismantling of the main Popcorn Time fork, and the end of YTS/YIFY.

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