Author: Andy

In a digital world where surveillance and privacy invasions are becoming more commonplace, increasing numbers of Internet users are improving their online security.

As a result, in recent years there has been an explosion in people deploying privacy-enhancing tools such as VPNs, which enable anyone to add an extra layer of protection against online snoops.

One of the most successful companies in this field is London Trust Media, the makers of the popular Private Internet Access (PIA) service. The company prides itself on its dedication to security and is possibly the only operator to have its strict no-logging claims tested in public.

But while a no-logging policy is an essential requirement for thousands of VPN customers, authorities in some regions see them as a threat. This morning, PIA is reporting a development in Russia which has left it with no other option than to leave the country.

In an email sent out to its users, PIA explains that due to the passing of a new law last year which requires Internet providers to hold logs of Internet traffic for up to a year, it has become a target for Russian authorities.

“We believe that due to the enforcement regime surrounding this new law, some of our Russian Servers (RU) were recently seized by Russian Authorities, without notice or any type of due process. We think it’s because we are the most outspoken and only verified no-log VPN provider,” PIA announced.

The law to which PIA refers was passed by Russia’s State Duma in July 2014 and enacted September 2015. It requires that all web services store the user data of Russians within the country. This means that international companies could be forced to have a physical local presence, to which Russian authorities potentially have access.

While the deadline for compliance is technically September 2016, Private Internet Access says that given the server seizure and future privacy implications, it will no longer be doing business in the region.

“Upon learning of the [seizures], we immediately discontinued our Russian gateways and will no longer be doing business in the region,” the company says.

“Luckily, since we do not log any traffic or session data, period, no data has been compromised. Our users are, and will always be, private and secure.”

Even though PIA has assured its users that there is nothing to fear, some remain concerned over the seizures. To those individuals, PIA is offering additional assurances that it’s going the extra mile to ensure total security.

“To make it clear, the privacy and security of our users is our number one priority,” the company says.

“For preventative reasons, we are rotating all of our certificates. Furthermore, we’re updating our client applications with improved security measures to mitigate circumstances like this in the future, on top of what is already in place.”

If they haven’t already done so, users should update their PIA desktop clients and Android apps to get the new upgrades.

In response to the Russian incident, PIA says it will take the opportunity to evaluate other countries and their policies.

“In any event, we are aware that there may be times that notice and due process are forgone. However, we do not log and are default secure against seizure,” the company concludes.

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

Over the past several years, many countries in mainly Western Europe have responded to pressure from US-based companies to act against Internet piracy.

In some cases, this has involved passing new legislation to make life harder for pirates but largely it has been left to national courts and informal industry-led stakeholders groups to decide how to deal with unauthorized distribution.

In Eastern Europe, anti-piracy activity is much more limited but now it appears that tough measures can be taken when the authorities see fit. According to reports coming out of Romania, the government has seized the domain of one of the country’s most popular streaming portals.

990.ro was among Romania’s top 100 most popular sites overall and looked like this before being shut down by the state.

A TorrentFreak reader familiar with the site confirmed that 990.ro was one of the most popular locations for streaming video, TV shows in particular.

“Game of Thrones episodes were live within just a few hours after airing, complete with new (local) translations. This site was huge, you could almost watch any TV show on the planet and about 90% of the latest movies,” he explained.

For now, however, the show(s) won’t go on. Following action by the government, 990.ro’s domain is now under the control of the Ministry of Justice and displays the following message.

While no notice was given of this seizure, the action didn’t entirely come out of the blue. In 2012, Romania’s Audiovisual Council (CNA) reported more than 40 ‘pirate’ movie and TV show websites to the police, demanding action to shut them down.

990.ro was among those reported. The list also included Vplay.ro, the largest site of its type at the time. That domain is also under the control of the Ministry of Justice. Many of the others mentioned have since shut down, moved to new domains and/or had old ones seized.

The action against 990.ro follows a similar crackdown carried out in June 2015 which received assistance from the FBI. Three sites were shut down then and several people were arrested.

Thus far there has been no reports of arrests following the latest domain seizure. However, more serious breaches of Romanian copyright law can be punishable by fines and jail sentences of up to four years.

Since 990.ro carried a lot of advertising, it wouldn’t be a surprise to hear that tax evasion and money laundering offenses are being investigated, just as they were following last year’s raids.

Local media initially reported that 990.ro is owned by Romanian news and entertainment portal Romania Online but the company is now denying the allegations.

“The 990.ro site does not belong and has never belonged to the company ROL ONLINE NETWORK SA or any other companies in the group ROL.ro,” the company said in a statement.

“990.ro site was one of the 145,232 customers of the FASTUPLOAD.ro free service that lets you store, transfer and viewing files. FASTUPLOAD.ro site is the largest Romanian storage services and file transfer and operates under Romanian law.”

According to ROL.ro’s Linkedin page, ROL.ro is indeed affiliated with FASTUPLOAD but says that any liability lies with that company, not them.

A direct IP address for 990.ro has since ceased to function and there is no news of any return for the site.

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

In case readers missed it, copyright holders are very unhappy with YouTube. In recent months the site has developed into a battleground over the DMCA and the entertainment industries’ war with Google, with the record labels making most of the noise.

This week it was the MPAA’s turn to put more pressure on the site, this time by linking to an article published by filmmaker and anti-piracy advocate Ellen Seidler. As can be seen below, it implores YouTube to clean up its act.

"Time for YouTube to get serious about cleaning up all the junk, spam and malware files on its site" https://t.co/DsTwh3GYv7 @voxindie

— MPAA (@MPAA) July 7, 2016

The piece by Seidler is an interesting one, in that it criticizes YouTube for allowing people to upload fake movies that lead people to scammy sites.

In the unlikely event readers haven’t seen them, these fake movies are easily found by typing the name of almost any mainstream film into YouTube’s search box and adding the words “full movie”.

Once accessed, the videos nearly always instruct users to ‘click the link’ below the video to access the full movie. These links rarely, if ever, lead to anything good, and especially not the movie people expect.

While Seidler’s post expresses concern over the dubious sites that YouTube users are sent to, it seems likely that her post is more broadly aimed at chipping away at YouTube’s credibility and reputation. Little doubt that the MPAA’s retweet had that in mind too.

However, taking a step back reveals a much more complex picture.

Seidler correctly notes that these fakes pollute YouTube’s results but she also reports a secondary problem – it makes her anti-piracy work much harder.

“When I search for copies of my film using my Content ID account, I have to wade through dozens of these fake uploads,” Seidler complains.

“Removing them is an incredibly time-consuming task as it seems YouTube has purposely chosen to make the Content ID dashboard as inconvenient as possible for users.”

Of course, this situation is bad for people like Seidler who are trying to protect their content but consider for a moment the tremendous negative effect on pirates.

For many years people were able to type a movie title into YouTube, filter out all clips less than 20 minutes long, and more often than not come up with a decent copy of the movie in question.

Well, no more.

Today, YouTube’s search results are a horrible place to attempt ‘full movie’ piracy and that’s mostly down to the ‘full movie’ scammers.

If anything, one might think that Hollywood would be at least marginally grateful for third-parties infecting would-be pirates with malware or getting them stuck in horrible subscription traps. That’s quality piracy deterrence right there.

Instead, Seidler suggests ways that YouTube could clean up its site, perhaps by detecting and removing these fakes with ContentID. Pirates would certainly appreciate that, but YouTube isn’t likely to oblige.

Proactively removing content in that manner would only invite calls for YouTube do the same for copyrighted content. Before long, the same calls would go out to Google in general, with big implications for its search business.

So for now, both Seidler and would-be pirates are going to have to put up with these fake movie operations. Anti-piracy people will have to figure it out for themselves, but the best advice for regular users is to never click on the links in ‘fake movie’ YouTube descriptions.

Finally, Seidler raises the question of who is behind these scams. One of the outfits she names is TzarMedia.com, a site that has hundreds of negative online reviews.

The rabbit hole seems very, very deep on this one but there seems to be a recurring theme for those with an urge to investigate further. It looks messy, really messy.

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

Seemingly every week there are horror stories of copyright holders abusing the DMCA in order to harass the little guy and suppress legitimate speech. It’s a problem that infuriates the masses, particularly on YouTube.

Early Friday, TorrentFreak was informed of a situation faced by a woman running Emadion, an Italy-based site dedicated to horror, the supernatural, and the bizarre.

Emadion is supported by a small YouTube channel which recently received notification that an uploaded video was infringing copyright. The details are enough to make smoke come out of any YouTuber’s ears.

The video in question features the infamous and harrowing 911 recording of a call which detailed a horrific pet chimpanzee attack that took place in the United States in 2009.

The Emadion channel operator had augmented the clip (warning: upsetting) with Italian subtitles for the benefit of local viewers. However, Emadion quickly received a copyright claim from BestMusic Digital, the representative of Romanian musician, Kazi Ploae si Specii, who claimed that the content was his.

Bemused, Emadion carried out some checks and found that the artist had uploaded a track titled ‘Valium‘. Sure enough, his track features a sample of the same 911 recording.

Believing that the copyright complaint was a mistake, Emadion filed a dispute with YouTube, but the response was not what they’d hoped for.

“After reviewing your notification, BestMusic Digital Distro has decided that the copyright infringement violation is still valid,” the notice read.

Furthermore, Emadion was advised that the 911 call video would now be monetized by the Romanian artist, alongside a warning of the implications of making a further unsuccessful appeal.

“You may appeal this decision, but if the author does not accept your appeal, you may receive a warning in your account,” YouTube advised.

Of course, any YouTube user would have a right to be worried by this notice. One dispute had already been rejected, why wouldn’t a second?

Concerned, a representative of Emadion contacted TF for advice. Could the 911 call really be copyrighted by this artist? In a word, doubtful. Connecticut, where the recording took place, treats 911 tapes as public records and makes them available online.

So, at this point the pitchforks were getting sharpened ready to deal with the aggressive copyright holder who was ‘bullying’ the little guy into submission. With a critical article already underway, TF contacted BestMusic Digital for comment. Their response was unexpectedly quick, frank, and friendly.

“We have revised the track from the artist that you mentioned, deleted the track and removed the material from YouTube. It seems that the artist used that sample in his track and uploaded it to our system for the use of Content ID,” a company spokesperson advised.

“As standard when uploading tracks to our system for Content ID, artists accept the [terms and conditions] stating that they have full rights over the uploaded content. On the other hand, there are underground artists that don’t always do things by the book and this is how things like these happen.”

Within minutes a very happy Emadion confirmed that the complaint had been withdrawn and the threat of a strike lifted. A great result. However, one thing hadn’t quite been cleared up – why was Emadion’s dispute rejected?

“It was just an error on my part. I clicked the wrong button. I resolved it when I saw your email,” TF was told.

While tales of happily solved copyright disputes aren’t the usual fodder of these pages, hopefully this one will prove helpful.

YouTube’s dispute process is somewhat clinical, and communication through it can prove frustrating for users. However, it’s worth remembering that there are real human beings at the ends of these problems and as a result there’s an opportunity for discussion and negotiation, person to person.

It might not always work, but it has to be worth a shot.

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

Following a few hints earlier this week, it is now fully confirmed. Kim Dotcom will be launching a brand new file-sharing site with a familiar name.

Megaupload 2.0 is pencilled in for a January 2017 launch, an event that will coincide with the 2012 closure of the original Megaupload and the massive police raid on its operators.

Having successfully avoided the clutches of a hungry United States government for half a decade, this five-year anniversary is an important one for Dotcom, and it’s becoming clear he hopes to celebrate it with another poke in the eye for the Obama administration.

Details are few at this stage, but here’s what we know. Megaupload 2.0 will have 100gb of free storage. It will allow users to sync all of their devices and there will be no data transfer limits. On-the-fly encryption will be baked-in.

But while site features are important, what the original Megaupload had going for it was millions of loyal users. They were all made homeless and scattered when the site was shut down but according to Dotcom, there will be a future grand reunion.

Intriguingly, the serial entrepreneur says that Megaupload 2.0 will get a fantastic start in life. Rather than simply relying on word-of-mouth advertising to get going, his new venture will launch with the original Megaupload user database intact.

How Dotcom managed to preserve a copy of this data isn’t clear, but he says that each user account held within will get a foot up.

“Most Megaupload accounts will be reinstated with Premium privileges on the new Megaupload,” Dotcom announced this morning.

If every one of those former Megaupload users hit the site on day one, that’s 100 million people needing attention. It’s unlikely that anywhere near that will come aboard, but just one or two percent would be a tremendous start.

But hosting files isn’t the only thing on Dotcom’s mind. His censorship-resistant MegaNet project is still in development and although it’s not going to be ready until 2018 at the earliest, Dotcom says that Megaupload 2.0 will be a crucial component of that network.

“Megaupload 2.0 will be the launch platform for MegaNet. Let’s make sure that we have critical mass first. #100MillionUsers,” he said this morning.

Dotcom clearly has much work to do and even flat-out will struggle to meet his January deadline. Still, he doesn’t intend to do it alone.

“To former Megaupload and current Mega employees. We welcome you with open arms. Mega App developers, we have a great deal for you. Ping me,” he wrote a few hours ago.

So how will former Megaupload users know if they can use their old credentials to access the new site?

“Expect an email,” Dotcom concludes.

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

Site blocking in the UK has become a hot topic after the world’s leading entertainment companies successfully applied for injunctions against many hundreds of ‘pirate’ sites.

In response, Compagnie Financière Richemont S.A., which owns several well-known luxury brands including Cartier and Mont Blanc, decided to get in on the action.

In 2014, Richemont wrote to the UK’s leading ISPs – Sky, TalkTalk, BT, Virgin Media, EE and Telefonica/O2 – with a request to block several sites offering counterfeit products. In common with earlier cases involving The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents, the ISPs refused and the case went to court.

In October 2014, the High Court ruled in favor of Richemont, stating that counterfeit product sites must be blocked in the same manner as torrent and streaming portals.

Despite this being a trademark case, the judge found that he had jurisdiction to order an injunction and that the ISPs should pay for any blockades to be implemented.

In a statement, a Richemont spokesperson told TorrentFreak that the decision was a positive step. However, the matter was not over. While the ISPs seemed happy to accept the High Court’s decision in respect of ‘pirate’ site blockades, they decided to contest the luxury brand injunction.

In their appeal, the ISPs complained that they are innocent parties and that the Court had no jurisdiction to hand down a blocking order. However, even in the event that it did have jurisdiction, the ISPs said that certain thresholds required for an injunction had not been met.

Continuing, the ISPs said that the judge had failed to apply the correct principles in deciding whether or not to hand down an order, and that the orders made were disproportionate. Finally, the judge should not have ordered the ISPs to foot the bill for blocking the infringing sites.

This week the Court of Appeal handed down its long awaited decision and it’s almost completely good news for the brand owners.

Dismissing the ISPs’ appeal, the Court said that High Court did indeed have the power to issue the blocking injunctions and that all the legal thresholds for doing so had been met.

“Each of the target websites was directed to consumers in the United Kingdom and the operators of those sites were advertising and offering for sale counterfeits of the goods of one of the named claimants,” Justice Briggs wrote.

“The [High Court] judge was entitled to make an order to try to prevent this happening for the third sentence of Article 11 of the Enforcement Directive and Article 8(3) of the Information Society Directive are concerned not only with measures aimed at bringing infringements of intellectual property rights to an end but also with measures aimed at preventing them.”

Interestingly, on the issue of who would pay for the site-blocking to be carried out, the Court of Appeal had some sympathy for the ISPs

“In my judgment the cost burden attributable to the implementation of a particular blocking order should fall upon the rightsholder making the application for it,” Justice Briggs wrote.

“In circumstances where valuable intangible rights of this kind need to be protected from abuse by others, I regard it as a natural incident of a business which consists of, or includes, the exploitation of such rights, to incur cost in their protection, to the extent that it cannot be reimbursed by appropriate orders against wrongdoers.”

But that doesn’t mean that the ISPs are completely off the hook. Justice Briggs said that while the ISPs wouldn’t have to pay the costs associated with implementing a blocking order, they would still have to foot the bill for “designing and installing the software with which to do so whenever ordered.”

Richemont lawyer Simon Baggs welcomed the decision.

“The court has recognized that often the best way for online unlawful activity to be stopped is for intermediaries such as ISPs to cut the Internet lifeblood that the websites need to trade,” Baggs said.

“Site blocking is a developing area in many jurisdictions globally and this judgment should further enable the growth of this important remedy.”

The ISPs still have the possibility of taking their case to the Supreme Court but no announcement has yet been made.

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

The Federation Against Copyright Theft is perhaps the most well-known anti-piracy group in the UK and it regularly makes headlines for its work tackling both on-and-offline infringement.

In addition to monitoring unauthorized content that has already been uploaded to the Internet, part of FACT’s work in recent years has been to disrupt the activities of would-be pirates before online distribution is undertaken.

That has often meant acting on intelligence gathered from watermarks embedded in previously pirated (‘cammed’) content, which enables outfits like FACT to predict where future cinema recordings might take place.

In addition, FACT works with cinema operators to ensure that staff are trained to spot suspicious activity that could indicate that an unauthorized recording or ‘camming’ is underway. FACT sees these frontline workers as a valuable asset.

In recognition of their efforts, each year FACT holds a special ceremony during which it presents awards to cinema workers whose actions have prevented potential movie piracy. This year’s event, which was co-hosted with the Film Distributors’ Association (FDA), was held yesterday in London.

FACT reports that a total of 17 cinema staff received awards as part of the ‘Fight Film Theft’ program. Each received a cash prize of up to £500 and a certificate for helping to prevent piracy on a range of movies including Deadpool, The Jungle Book, and Angry Birds.

The 17 cinema employees were involved in 17 ‘camming’ incidents that took place in a broad range of locations, including London, Leeds, Hull, Sunderland and Glasgow.

All of the incidents were reported to the police. FACT has provided no additional detail on how many of the police attendances resulted in arrests or prosecutions. Nevertheless, the anti-piracy outfit is pleased with the results.

“Illegal recording is still the source of more than 90% of all pirated films and so our Fight Film Theft program with the FDA, is essential to protecting new releases and preventing criminal activity,” says FACT Director General Kieron Sharp.

While FACT has been front and center of movie anti-piracy enforcement in the UK for many years, it faces an uncertain future. In May, the major Hollywood studios announced that after thirty years working with FACT they would soon withdraw its funding.

That leaves FACT with a 50% budget shortfall for 2017. No announcement has yet been made on how that deficit will be corrected.

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

With multiple legal cases underway in several jurisdictions, Kim Dotcom is undoubtedly a man with things on his mind.

In New Zealand, he’s fighting extradition to the United States. And in the United States he’s fighting a government that wants to bring him to justice on charges of copyright infringement, conspiracy, money laundering and racketeering.

After dramatically launching and then leaving his Mega file-hosting site following what appears to have been an acrimonious split, many believed that Dotcom had left the file-sharing space for good. But after a period of quiet, it now transpires that the lure of storing data has proven too much of a temptation for the businessman.

In a follow-up to previous criticism of his former company, earlier today Dotcom took another shot at Mega. That was quickly followed by a somewhat surprising announcement.

“A new site is in the making. 100gb free cloud storage,” Dotcom said.

Intrigued, TorrentFreak spoke with Dotcom to find out more. Was he really planning to launch another file-sharing platform?

“I can say that this year I have set things in motion and a new cloud storage site is currently under development,” Dotcom confirmed.

“I’m excited about the new innovations the site will contain.”

When pressed on specific features for the new platform, Dotcom said it was too early to go into details. However, we do know that the site will enable users to sync all of their devices and there will be no data transfer limits.

For the privacy-conscious, Dotcom also threw out another small bone, noting that the site will also feature on-the-fly encryption. Given the German’s attention to security in recent years, it wouldn’t be a surprise if additional features are added before launch.

“Eight years of knowledge and a long planning period went into this. It will be my best creation yet,” Dotcom told TF.

A potential launch date for the site hasn’t been confirmed but the Megaupload and Mega founder is currently teasing the hashtag #5thRaidAnniversary, suggesting that his new project will launch in January 2017, five years after the Megaupload raids.

Of course, we also asked Dotcom if he’d decided on a name for his new cloud-storage site. Typically he’s playing his cards close to his chest and leaving us to fill in the blanks, but he hinted that an old name with a big reputation might be making a comeback.

“The name of the new site will make people happy,” he told us.

TF will be getting a sneak peek at the site when it’s ready for launch but in the meantime, readers might be wondering what has happened to Dotcom’s censorship-resistant MegaNet project.

“Mobile networks and devices still have to catch up with my vision for MegaNet and it will probably not be before 2018 until a beta goes live,” Dotcom concludes.

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

In an effort to monitor the shifting habits of Internet pirates in the UK, the Intellectual Property Office has commissioned regular reports from the researchers at Kantar Media.

Originally commissioned by telecoms watchdog Ofcom and sponsored by the IPO back in 2012, the reports cover the consumption of both legal and illegal content by Internet users aged 12 and above. “Wave 6” was published this morning and covers the three-month period March to May 2016.

The headline figure is that around 15% of Internet users consumed at least one item of infringing content during the monitoring period, which equates to around 6.7 million people throughput the population.

However, when the study considered only Internet users who had actually consumed content online during the three-month period (rather than all Internet users regardless of consumption), the number of infringers jumped to 25%.

According to the study, the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks has decreased again this year, from 12% down to 10% among all Internet users and from 26% to 23% among those who admit to being infringers.

UTorrent remains the most popular ‘service’ used to infringe, but usage is on the decline from 17% of infringers last year to 12% in 2016. The Pirate Bay sits one place behind with 11%.

Levels of infringement vary across content formats. The highest levels relate to audio, with 8% of all Internet users saying they obtain music from illegal sources.

“Music was by far the most-consumed content type, both digitally (355 million tracks) and physically (88 million tracks) over the three-month period. We estimate that 78 million music tracks were accessed illegally online [during the monitoring period],” the researchers write.

Those are indeed big numbers but progress is being made. Estimated illegal consumption of music in the same period last year was more than 96 million tracks.

This year, around 7% of Internet users say they obtained TV shows from illegal sources, with movies in third place with 6%. While consumption of legal content has gone up, both figures represent a deteriorating piracy situation when compared to last year.

“[Legal consumption of] films showed an increase in volumes of just over 5 million and a more notable shift was seen for TV programmes of a 16 million increase over the last year,” the researchers note.

“These categories also both showed increases in the digital volumes of infringement with films now estimated at 24 million and TV programmes 27 million pieces of content.”

This year there are few surprises when it comes to people’s motivation to obtain content without paying for it.

“The most commonly cited reasons for infringing were because it is free (49%), convenient (45%) and quick (42%). Speed and convenience have both shown increases in 2016,” the researchers report.

Given the above, it’s straightforward to predict how infringers say they could be persuaded to pirate less.

Just under a quarter of infringers say that cheaper prices would help, while one in five say that content being made available legally would reduce their reliance on illicit sources.

Interestingly, the study also shows that non-service related solutions to deter pirates might not be particularly effective. Year on year, it appears that fewer Internet users are worried about oppressive anti-piracy measures.

“Responses to the threat of ISP letters suspending their accounts or restricting their internet speed have decreased again in 2016; the suspension of internet service in particular has fallen by a small proportions wave-on-wave, from 22% in the first wave, to 15% in 2015 and the current level of 11%,” the researchers write.

The headline figure of millions of citizens engaged in piracy certainly sounds like a lot but there are relatively few hardcore pirates in the UK.

Just 5% of all UK Internet users admit to exclusively obtaining content from illegal sources, meaning that the remainder who consume content are also happy to “do the right thing” via subscription or ad-supported services. That’s a very encouraging sign.

The full report can be downloaded here (pdf)

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

Faced with resilient websites and services that respond quickly to attacks by law enforcement, copyright holders around the world have sought more permanent ways of limiting the growth of pirate sites.

Spreading rapidly through Europe to countries as far-flung as Australia, one of the most popular has become the website-blocking injunction. Initially obtained via complex and pioneering legal processes, in some countries these court orders are now fairly easily obtained.

Researchers from Western Sydney University and King’s College London have published a paper examining regimes in three key regions, the EU, Australia and Singapore. They find that all display shortcomings which negatively affect rightsholders and in some cases even due process.

“[T]here are problems not only with the remedy itself but also in the manner in which the blocking injunction is implemented,” the researchers write.

“The fact that multiple proceedings have to be filed in order to obtain a global level of enforcement and the possibility of blocking measures being circumvented are problems with the remedy itself.”

In other words, copyright holder dreams of rendering content inaccessible everywhere will require injunctions in all countries against every major ISP. Even then, that won’t solve the problem of the workarounds (proxies, VPNs) that are constantly being made available.

But while rightsholder problems are regularly documented, the researchers also draw attention to the manner in which injunctions are obtained, particularly in the UK where many hundreds of sites are blocked by ISPs. Their first concern focuses on how site operators are effectively excluded from proceedings.

“Notably, neither of [the] domestic provisions under which the High Court typically exercises jurisdiction in granting blocking injunctions provide that the operators of the online locations sought to be blocked be made party to the application before the court,” the researchers write.

“Thus, a common feature in the series of cases leading to blocking injunctions in the copyright context…is that only the ISPs who were called upon to block the target online locations were before court and not the operators of the online locations in issue.”

While it is unlikely that many site operators would appear in court to contest an injunction, the researchers say it is a “cause for significant concern” that the legal mechanism effectively freezes them out of the process, especially since local ISPs no longer contest proceedings.

“[M]ost orders to-date have been granted after consideration of the applications on paper alone. Essentially, what this means is that the court is only possessed of the material submitted by the rights-holders, which go uncontested by the ISPs, leaving the interests of the operators of the target online locations completely unrepresented,” they write.

But while noting the above, the researchers do make it clear that the court hears the merits of these cases. They also add that the sites being blocked are “patently infringing”. However, due to the way the legal process operates, it’s possible it could be abused.

“What must be emphasised is that, in future, there may be instances where the operator of an online location has a plausible defence to a claim of IP infringement,” the researchers say.

“In the circumstances where the court is only privy to the pleadings and documentary evidence submitted on behalf of a right-holder, the court’s discretion may become the subject of abuse, especially since the only other party before court (i.e. the ISP) shows no interest in protecting the operators of target online locations.

Indeed, due to the manner in which the relevant EU directives are implemented, even site operators who can be identified and notified don’t have to be informed of proceedings under the law.

“In the EU’s context at least….the implementation of the blocking injunction fall short of due process requirements,” the researchers note.

“Although, in the UK….a safeguard was incorporated into blocking orders allowing the authors/owners of the content blocked to apply to court to have the injunction varied or set aside, the lack of a notice requirement under the law may render this safeguard, at best, useless.”

Thus far there have been no signs that rightsholders have attempted to abuse the blocking process in the UK, but the almost complete lack of transparency after court orders are issued remains a cause for concern.

Once an injunction is obtained, rightsholders are free to add additional domains to the UK’s blocklist, as and when they see fit. No ISP currently maintains a public list of the domains being blocked meaning that the whole process is shielded from public scrutiny.

It’s believed that more than 1,000 sites might be blocked in this manner but few people have this information. A public list would go some way to inspiring confidence that the kind of abuse the researchers highlight doesn’t come to pass.

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