Author: Andy

Advertising and marketing efforts are all around us. Every waking hour of every day, someone somewhere tries to get us interested in their latest product or service.

While TV and radio have dominated over the years, increasingly the Internet is the go-to platform for companies determined to portray their product as the next big thing.

The Internet has many great qualities and for those looking to do something a bit different or wild, its unregulated nature means you can do whatever the hell you want. Or at the least shoot first, worry about the consequences later.

That appears to be the philosophy of the company behind the Z Stream Box, the next ‘big’ thing in audio-visual consumption. Promoted via a glossy website and numerous online videos, the set-top Z Stream Box aims to fulfil the dreams of every movie, TV show, sports and music junkie.

“Get the Biggest Shows, the Latest Movies, Stream the biggest blockbusters here first. Watch every episode of your favorite shows, past and present, Live and on demand. Enjoy the latest series and specials as they premiere without waiting,” the advertising reads.

“Break free of annual contracts, surprise fees and TV that ties you down. With Z Stream Box® get the TV you love over 100 of your favorite channels, Hit movies, Documentaries, Sports and more! NO contracts and NO monthly payments ever.”

While these kinds of claims are usually the sole preserve of pirate devices, there are various indicators on the Z Stream site suggesting that this must be a legitimate offer. Firstly, it has celebrity endorsements. Here’s a nice image of singer, songwriter and actress Christina Millian enjoying the device.

And to make sure that the cord-cutting phenomenon resonates with the younger generation, here’s YouTube star Jordyn Jones holding a Z Stream Box and looking surprised at how much it can do.

For those who haven’t already guessed, the basic premise of the Z Stream Box is that people can stop paying their expensive cable bills and get all their content online. It’s an Internet sensation!

Actually, let’s cut the nonsense. Z Stream Box is nothing more than a Kodi-enabled Android box with all the best pirate addons such as Genesis and Icefilms fully installed.

While that probably isn’t much of a shock by now, the way this device is being marketed is nothing short of remarkable.

Claimed celebrity endorsements aside, the people at Z Stream have commissioned a full-blown 18-minute infomercial for their device which must have cost a small fortune and would be at home on any shopping channel.

Seriously, this gig has absolutely everything – several glossy presenters, many actors, a perfect family, potential and existing ‘customers’ who can’t quite believe how good the device is, and much much more.

Of course, you’re probably wondering how much all this costs. Well, it’s the equivalent of just a few months cable, apparently. Admittedly that’s quite a lot of cash, but it’s the savings that are important, Z Stream say.

In the end it’s revealed the unit costs ‘just’ $295.95. That’s almost $300 for a box that would cost less than $100 if people looked around for something similar on eBay or Amazon. But do those products come with a free five-day cruise for two around the Bahamas, including all onboard meals and entertainment? Thought not. (18 minutes into the video below)

The full and quite unbelievable infomercial is embedded below and for those interested in just how far pirate advertising can go, the Z Stream Box website can be found here. Facebook here, YouTube account here.

Update: The Z Stream Box website has been taken down, Google Cache to the rescue, with Archive.is backup

Video mirror here

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

There are plenty of options for copyright holders seeking to hinder the progress of pirate sites but one of the most effective is attacking domains.

The strategy has been employed most famously against The Pirate Bay and over the past couple of years the site has lost most of the domains it deployed to stay online.

At the very top of the domain name ‘tree’ is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). This non-profit body is responsible for the smooth-running of the Internet’s Doman Name System. However, if copyright holders had their way, ICANN would also act as the Internet’s piracy police by forcing registrars to prevent illegal use of domain names.

Last year, ICANN told TorrentFreak that it had no role to play in “policing content” but of course, copyright holders continue to pile on the pressure.

The latest efforts come from the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) and the Coalition for Online Accountability (COA), which count the major studios and record labels among their members.

Both have concerns over the “Public Interest Commitments” (PICs) present in new gTLD registry agreements. Specification 11 states that registry operators must include a clause in their registry/registrar agreements which prohibits domain name holders from engaging in various kinds of abuse, from malware and phishing through to copyright and trademark abuse.

This contractual wording allows registries to lay down acceptable use rules with registrars, who in turn do the same with domain owners. However, IPC believes that it is the job of the registries, registrars and ultimately ICANN to enforce these terms and conditions and suspend pirate domains.

In April, IPC chief Greg Shatan wrote to ICANN chair Dr. Stephen Crocker (pdf). He expressed concern at earlier ICANN comments which indicated that the group considers copyright infringement, counterfeiting, and other fraudulent practices to be “outside its mandate”.

That was followed by a June 17, 2016 follow-up letter to ICANN from COA (pdf) expressing similar concerns.

This week, ICANN’s Dr. Crocker responded (pdf) to the April letter from IPC, confirming that his group will “bring enforcement actions” against registries and registrars that fail to include abuse warnings in their end-user agreements.

However, ICANN also made it crystal clear that it won’t be getting directly involved in disputes involving allegedly infringing domains.

“This does not mean, however, that ICANN is required or qualified to make factual and legal determinations as to whether a Registered Name Holder or a website operator is violating applicable laws and governmental regulations, and to assess what would constitute an appropriate remedy for such activities in any particular situation,” Dr. Croker told IPC.

Noting that both registries and registrars have expressed difficulty in assessing alleged violations of the law, ICANN invites those with a grievance against allegedly infringing sites to deal with matters themselves. One possibility might be through voluntary agreements such as those the MPAA struck with Donuts and Radix.

“While these initiatives are outside of ICANN’s limited remit, we are hopeful that these voluntary efforts will produce usable tools and mechanisms for use by Registries and Registrars,” Dr. Croker said.

Finally, ICANN notes that there is nothing stopping “harmed parties” from taking action against registries, registrars or domain owners “through administrative, regulatory or judicial bodies to seek fines, damages, injunctive relief or other remedies available at law.”

In other words, if copyright holders want something done about their disputes, there are several options available already. Just don’t expect ICANN to become judge, jury, and executioner.

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

While threats against The Pirate Bay were once in vogue, entertainment industry outfits have already decided that attacking ancillary legitimate companies might be the way forward.

As a result (and despite going way beyond its obligations under current copyright law) Google is increasingly being made the scapegoat for the world’s piracy problems.

Someone uploads illegal content to YouTube? That must be Google’s fault. Google indexes an allegedly infringing site among the millions of others it indexes? Google’s fault too, even though it’s prepared to deindex any number of pages on request.

In short, whatever the company does, it’s never enough, and the pressure is being ramped up from all angles from those who expect Google to become the Internet police.

Last evening TF published an article detailing how the MPAA’s deal with the Donuts registry had resulted in the disabling of the Primewire.guru domain.

The piece was retweeted by Google Senior Counsel Fred von Lohmann but soon others were weighing in. Lawyer Devlin Hartline from the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property immediately accused Google of being part of the problem.

Bye, https://t.co/s6nqGfpa6D! Google helped you: https://t.co/VmjkA8gStl But the good guys won this time! #FixTheNet https://t.co/xr936udq9g

— Devlin Hartline (@devlinhartline) June 30, 2016

Von Lohmann quickly fired back, noting that all Google had done was index the site like any other among the billion online today. It also received less than 500 URL complaints against the site and had removed them all.

@devlinhartline You mean "google indexed the site on the web, for which <500 URLs were ever DMCA'd". https://t.co/VB9GUIiXKy

— Fred von Lohmann (@flohmann) June 30, 2016

But by now Hartline had the bit between his teeth

“It was an obvious pirate site, which @DonutsInc thankfully did something about rather than index it for the world. #FixTheNet,” he wrote.

But Hartline wasn’t done yet. Since Primewire.guru is clearly a very small player, the lawyer upped the ante by changing the argument to encompass a much bigger site.

4Shared.com is a world leader when it comes to copyright complaints so Hartline asked von Lohmann why that site still appears in search results, throwing in a #lame for good measure.

@flohmann And when noticed 37,970,792 times, https://t.co/mMTPCBvvt3, you still index a site, https://t.co/T07R9GxkmR #FixTheNet #lame

— Devlin Hartline (@devlinhartline) June 30, 2016

Noting that Hartline had switched the argument, von Lohmann turned his attention to the Google search parameters his sparring partner had included in his Tweet. Rather than searching for specific and perhaps pirate content, Hartline’s search was formulated to show all of 4shared’s pages. As a result, that’s what he got.

“Can you get 4shared to appear [in Google’s search results] with a query that doesn’t include their name?” von Lohmann responded. Hartline quickly fired back.

“If you think that 4shared is so obviously pirate that you demote it in the search results, why not just remove it altogether?” he said. Old ground, von Lohmann said.

@devlinhartline Not room here to revisit the entire SOPA/PIPA debate, but shouldn't be too hard for you to find info on that.

— Fred von Lohmann (@flohmann) June 30, 2016

In response, Hartline said he was “well aware” of the debate but still he persisted. If Donuts is prepared to pull the trigger, why doesn’t Google simply do “more”?

Of course, no matter what anti-piracy measures Google puts in place, rightsholders always want “more”. For its part, Google feels that it’s doing enough but in the meantime von Lohmann had some pretty sound advice for Hartline. If you don’t want infringing results, stop searching for them.

@devlinhartline @DonutsInc Where "more" = whole-site removal of a site that you can't make appear in a search result w/o its name in query.

— Fred von Lohmann (@flohmann) June 30, 2016

This is a pretty important statement from von Lohmann. What he’s reiterating is that unless people go specifically hunting for content on sites that have received the most DMCA notices, those sites won’t appear in search results.

This means that users who are casually searching for music, movies or TV shows (legal or illegal) won’t be handed results from 4shared or other popular ‘pirate’ sites unless they form their searches to do so.

Of course, ‘pirate’ results still appear but these days the quality of those results is much lower than it used to be. Rightsholders won’t be happy until they’ve gone completely though, so arguments like these will continue, ad infinitum.

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

Following successful prosecutions of torrent site operators such as those behind The Pirate Bay, Sweden has turned to the increasing problem of online streaming.

Cases involving streaming sites are relatively rare and as a result, case law is thin on the ground. Nevertheless, last year Swedish authorities felt confident enough to close down the country’s most popular streaming site.

Founded half a decade ago, Swefilmer took advantage of increasing trends towards browser-based viewing of pirate content. In addition to convenience and a non-existent learning curve, advanced users were also attracted to the perceived security benefits of streaming platforms.

Swefilmer gained significant traction but that came to an end last summer when one of the site’s operators was arrested and detained for 90 hours.

That was followed this year by the detention of the site’s main operator in Germany, following the execution of a secret European arrest warrant.

As reported last week, the men – aged 22 and 25 – were recently prosecuted. Together they face charges of facilitating copyright infringement of more than 1,400 movies alongside penalties of $1.7m.

Swefilmer’s primary operator also stands accused of aggravated money laundering offenses related to his handling of the site’s finances.

The Swefilmer case is one of the most important prosecutions in Sweden’s piracy crackdown history and this week the trial began as planned. Entertainment giants including Disney, Sony, Warner, Universal and Fox lined up Tuesday to take down their adversaries, but things didn’t go to plan.

Rather than the relatively open-and-shut case anticipated by the prosecution, after just a few hours a decision was made to suspend the case.

“We asked the court to seek a preliminary ruling from the European Court of Justice, and we got what we wanted,” says Claes Kennedy, the lawyer representing the 22-year-old.

While Kennedy’s client admits to having been involved in the operation of Swefilmer, all along he has maintained that his actions did not amount to a crime. Why that might indeed be true lies in a case currently in the hands of the ECJ.

The case deals with a dispute between Dutch blog GeenStijl.nl and Playboy. In 2011, GeenStijl published a post linking to leaked Playboy photos, which were stored on file-hosting platform FileFactory.

Although Playboy publisher Sanoma successfully requested the removal of the photos from FileFactory, GeenStijl continued to link to other public sources where the images were still available. This, Sanoma argued, amounted to infringement.

A Dutch Court subsequently asked the EU Court of Justice to rule whether those links could be seen as a ‘communication to the public’ under Article 3(1) of the Copyright Directive of the Copyright Directive, and whether they facilitated copyright infringement.

Earlier this year, Advocate General Melchior Wathelet delivered his advice to the ECJ, noting that in his opinion “linking” is not the same as “making available” – that would only apply to the original uploader. That means that GeenStijl’s acts of linking would not amount to infringement, the ECJ summarized.

“Hyperlinks which lead, even directly, to protected works are not ‘making them available’ to the public when they are already freely accessible on another website, and only serve to facilitate their discovery,” the EU Court of Justice wrote.

The Advocate General’s advice is not binding, but the ECJ often gives significant weight to this kind of expert opinion. The final verdict is expected to be released later this year and Claes Kennedy is hoping for a positive outcome for his client.

“What we know so far, is that linking to another website is not to be considered the same as making available to the public. But we are waiting for a decision from the EU Court,” Kennedy says.

So for now the Swefilmer trial is on hold, initially until September but potentially later depending on when the ECJ hands down its ruling. Whenever it arrives the decision will have implications way beyond this case and right across Europe.

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

Without a doubt, Github is a huge player in the world of coding. The platform is the largest of its type in the world with the company currently reporting 15 million users collaborating across 38 million repositories.

As the development platform used by file-sharing projects including the infamous Popcorn Time, Github appears a few times a year here on TF. Those appearances are often due to various types of copyright disputes, from allegedly infringing projects to allegedly stolen code.

When it comes to Github copyright complaints, those reported here are the tip of a vast iceberg but thanks to the transparency report just published by the company, we now have a much clearer idea of the numbers involved.

“In 2015, we received significantly more takedown notices, and took down significantly more content, than we did in 2014,” Github reports.

Last year the company received just 258 DMCA notices, with 17 of those responded to with a counter-notice or retraction. In 2015, that number jumped to 505 takedown notices, with just 62 the subject of counters or withdrawals.

But while tracking and reporting the numbers of DMCA notices is useful, the numbers shown above obscure a more serious situation. Copyright holders are not limited to reporting one URL or location per DMCA notice. In fact, each notice filed can target tens, hundreds, or even thousands of allegedly infringing locations.

“Often, a single takedown notice can encompass more than one project. We wanted to look at the total number of projects, such as repositories, Gists, and Pages sites, that we had taken down due to DMCA takedown requests in 2015,” Github writes.

When processed, a much bigger picture was revealed.

By any measure, September 2015 was a particularly active month and this naturally raised alarm bells at Github. Upon investigation, it became clear that the company had received DMCA notices that targeted many repositories all at once.

“Usually, the DMCA reports we receive are from people or organizations reporting a single potentially infringing repository. However, every now and then we receive a single notice asking us to take down many repositories,” Github explains.

“We classified ‘Mass Removals’ as any takedown notice asking us to remove content from more than one hundred repositories, counting each fork separately, in a single takedown notice.”

When these type of notices are withdrawn from the report, Github says that DMCA notice frequency normalizes across the year, but nevertheless they still represent a significant proportion of the notices received. (A ‘Frequent Noticer’ is someone who sends more than four notices in a year)

“While 83% of our 505 DMCA takedown notices came in from individuals and organizations sending requests to take down small numbers of repositories, the remaining 17% of notices accounted for the overwhelming majority of the content we actually removed,” Github says.

“In all, fewer than twenty individual notice senders requested removal of over 90% of the content GitHub took down in 2015.”

Finally, Github provides detail on important issues surrounding user privacy, which mainly affects those who maintain projects that are likely to attract legal attention.

In 2014, Github received a total of 10 subpoenas relating to projects it hosts. Last year that grew to 12 and in total the company handed over information in 83% of cases.

However, due to gagging orders, affected users were only given notice in just 30% of cases. Github received seven gag orders in 2015, up from four in 2014.

Finally, Github touches on the issue of National Security Orders.

“We are not allowed to say much about this last category of legal disclosure requests, including national security letters from law enforcement and orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,” the company writes.

“If one of these requests comes with a gag order — and they usually do — that not only prevents us from talking about the specifics of the request but even the existence of the request itself.”

To that end, Github ‘reveals’ that it received somewhere between zero and 249 National Security Orders in 2015. The full report is available here.

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

For several decades owners of home computers have been aware of a simple fact. If legitimate software is available, it can be copied for use by someone who hasn’t paid for it.

For years this was as simple as audio-recording a cassette tape or cloning disks of various kinds, but more recently things have become decidedly more challenging. Digital Rights Management, or DRM as it’s more often known, is now a serious thorn in the side of software pirates.

The situation is being felt most acutely in the gaming world, where various protection methods are beginning to take their toll on those who prefer not to pay for the biggest games around.

In particular, the infamous Denuvo DRM anti-tamper system is responsible for keeping games such as Just Cause 3, Doom, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and a raft of other titles out of the hands of pirates. However, partially confirmed rumors emanating from Russia suggest that the cracks (excuse the pun) might be appearing in Denuvo.

Just to be clear, until such time that a working crack appears in the wild, most rumors (and there have been plenty of them recently) should be taken with a generous pinch of salt. However, during the past 24 hours, there have been unusual levels of excitement to suggest a crack might actually be close to surfacing.

The game at the forefront of discussion is the critically-acclaimed Rise of the Tomb Raider (ROTTR) from Square Enix. Like many Denuvo protected titles, ROTTR has thus far proven uncrackable but according to sources on Russian sites MKDev and Exelab, serious progress is being made.

What is causing the most excitement is a video which claims to show a crack of ROTTR in action. With most notation in Russian it’s difficult to follow in precise detail, but from the images alone it seems very likely that the game has been compromised, at least up to a point. (Watch here (low frame rate))

So who is taking credit for this amazing feat? Well officially, no one yet, but various clues suggest that the crack is the product of a collaboration between a Russian hacker known online as Bronco and Scene group RELOADED (RLD).

While RLD is predictably saying nothing, yesterday Bronco gave a shout out to RLD on Exelab’s forums in a posting which included the words “special thanks RLD and v00doo.”

Furthermore, MKDEV (who is also working on Denuvo and was responsible for cracking Football Manager 2016) is indicating on his site (in broken English) that RLD might soon be delivering a crack for Rise of the Tomb Raider.

“SOON THEY ARE COMING … 1 BY 1 NOT BY OUR HAND BUT…RLD…ROTTR…,” his message reads.

Additionally, a hi-res image from the ‘crack’ video appears to show ‘RLD!’ in the near right-hand corner, perhaps more evidence that RLD played a major role in what is currently happening.

In the absence of any ‘official’ announcement some analysis has been provided by an individual known online as RengarSenpai. He has also been working on Denuvo and appears to have gained access to some of MKDEV’s research in the past.

“The truth is that Denuvo is fully cracked for that specific game [Rise of the Tomb Raider], not emulated or worked around,” he writes.

But of course, the proof of the pudding is always in the eating and short of the all-important crack appearing in public, many will doubt it even exists.

Still, that hasn’t stopped the breathless celebrations starting early, especially from those prepared to download mysterious .exe files labeled up as Rise of the Tomb Raider cracks.

Rest assured, they’re all fakes….at least for now.

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

Following the massive raids on Megaupload and its operators in January 2012, there are few signs that the case is progressing at anything greater than a glacial pace.

Notably, Kim Dotcom and his former business associates continue to live in New Zealand despite efforts by authorities in the United States to have them extradited to face trial.

Dotcom is clear, however. Every time there is a push to tighten the noose, the entrepreneur fights back. This will not be a battle easily won by either side, and the Megaupload founder is as determined as ever to maintain his comfortable and privileged life.

But consider for a moment if it all went wrong. Imagine the final, final appeal fails and an order is handed down for Dotcom to be extradited to the United States. How might that play out?

Thus far, former Megaupload programmer Andrus Nõmm is the only person from the case to have faced justice in the United States. He was sentenced to a year and a day after traveling voluntarily to the United States last year.

In all, Nõmm served just over ten months, a sentence dwarfed by the five decades or more faced by Kim Dotcom. But despite the comparatively short time inside, the 37-year-old Estonian says his experience was still pretty miserable.

In an interview with Estonian journalist Toivo Tänavsuu just republished in English by Ars Technica, Nõmm says that things were bad from the outset.

“I was held in a detention center for a few weeks, and that was worse than prison. You share a closed room which is maybe two by three meters, and you only get out for six to seven hours a day. There are no beds. You only get a 3-4 centimeter thick piece of polyurethane foam which you can lay down on the concrete floor,” Nõmm says.

While Kim Dotcom was held in prison in New Zealand following his arrest in 2012, conditions were better than this. Nutritionally, markedly so.

“They gave us enough [food] so that we didn’t die. I was starving all the time,” Nõmm reveals. “There were three or four different menus with a list of different things: hamburgers, meatloaf, steak. But no matter what you asked for, they always brought you a tiny, bland burger.”

But accommodation woes were only the beginning. The Estonian says that when he appeared in court in Virginia, the agreement he’d signed with the U.S. before departing his former home in the Netherlands had been lost.

“I actually had to sign a paper with counts to which I hadn’t confessed — for example, the claim that I knew that Megaupload was earning millions. We signed the new agreement half an hour before the hearing. They used very specific English in court, but nobody was interested in whether I needed an interpreter or not,” he says.

As Nõmm set off to serve his year in prison, he did so on a bus, in shackles.

“You don’t get any food, you can’t go to the toilet, and sometimes you drive for 12 hours straight,” he says.

“They never send you straight to where you’re going. You drive through a number of other prisons first. If you make trouble, say by complaining to the judge that your rights are being violated, you’re put through this thing called ‘diesel therapy.’ They bounce you back and forth between prisons like a ping-pong ball.”

The Megaupload programmer was on the bus for 16 hours, stopping off en route for a 10-day stay in a supermax prison and eventually landing at Moshannon Valley prison in Pennsylvania.

“The prisoners were in barracks, 80 men to a block. There were five buildings altogether, each of them with six blocks like some kind of big hospital. Most of the inmates did sports. I wasn’t interested in body-building or getting tattoos. I just walked around for hours or read,” Nõmm says.

“I read a lot, four or five books a week. I scribbled some plans and specifications for my projects, or watched stupid American TV series. I took Spanish and Chinese courses. Not much of either stuck, but at least it took up my time.”

While Moshannon Valley is a lower-risk facility, it certainly wasn’t a walk in the park. Nõmm says that everybody had to work for at least 20 hours each week “unclogging the toilets, digging pits, painting, or helping sort the books” and for this the inmates were paid 12 cents per hour. For scale, a pack of coffee cost $4.

Nõmm survived his ordeal and says that prison hasn’t changed him. Notably, however, he has nothing good to say about Kim Dotcom, despite the Megaupload founder giving him a job and openly supporting the Estonian on Twitter.

“[Dotcom] is only saying that to make himself look better. He even tried to go into politics in New Zealand to win the elections and change the law so they couldn’t extradite him,” Nõmm says.

“He understands that social media has a massive influence. Civil war within Megaupload isn’t in his best interests. He’s this martyr, this freedom fighter.”

With Nõmm’s sentence served, he’s now a free man and can largely put his Megaupload ordeal behind him. Kim Dotcom cannot say the same and Nõmm believes that authorities in the United States will ultimately get their hands on him.

“He’ll eventually end up in the US. He’ll most likely throw everyone under the bus. Kim’s only interested in Kim,” he concludes.

Whatever happens next, Dotcom won’t want to spend fifty minutes in a U.S. prison, let alone 50 years. He’ll spend every penny he has left to stop that from happening, but this is just the beginning.

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

Founded half a decade ago, Swefilmer was Sweden’s most popular unauthorized streaming site.

Offering all the latest movies and TV shows, Swefilmer (and another, Dreamfilm) captured up to 25% of all web TV viewing in Sweden according to a 2015 report.

Last summer, however, the noose began to tighten. In July local man Ola Johansson revealed that he’d been raided by the police under suspicion of being involved in running the site.

Meanwhile, police continued the hunt for the site’s primary operator and in March 2016 it was revealed that a Turkish national had been arrested in Germany on a secret European arrest warrant. The 25-year-old is said to be the person who received donations from users and set up Swefilmer’s deals with advertisers.

Both men have now been prosecuted by Swedish authorities. In an indictment filed in the Varberg District Court, both men are accused of copyright infringement connected to the unlawful distribution of more than 1,400 movies.

Additionally, the 25-year-old stands accused of aggravated money laundering offenses related to his handling of Swefilmer’s finances.

The prosecution says that the site generated more than $1.7m between November 2013 and June 2015. More than $1.5m of that amount came from advertising with user donations contributing around $110,000. The state wants the 25-year-old to forfeit the full amount. A $77,000 car and properties worth $233,000 have already been seized.

While both could be sent to prison, the 22-year-old faces less serious charges and will be expected to pay back around $3,600.

The trial, which is expected to go ahead in just over a week, will be the most significant case against a streaming portal in Sweden to date.

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

The unauthorized copying and distribution of copyrighted content is a multi-billion dollar puzzle that entertainment industry companies are desperate to solve.

As such, anti-piracy companies are always trying to come up with new ways to stop people from sharing that material online. With that an almost impossible task, some have taken to watermarking instead, with the aim of tracking content and providing a trail back to the source.

What watermarking (so-called ‘Social DRM’) offers over more traditional DRM mechanisms is that it limits inconvenience to the end user and doesn’t hinder file compatibility across devices. However, it does have serious privacy implications for those using ‘infected’ files.

This problem has become a thorn in the side of a group of researchers calling themselves the Institute for Biblio-Immunology. In an email sent to TorrentFreak this week, the group detailed its work against the BooXtream watermarking system offered by Dutch company Icontact.

It all began when publisher Verso Books published an eBook version of Aaron Swartz’s ‘The Boy Who Could Change the World’. This edition of the book prompted an angry response from some quarters and the addition of BooXtream watermarks only made matters worse.

The problem is that BooXtream embeds the personal details of the eBook buyer into the book itself, and this stays with the file forever. If that book turns up anywhere where it shouldn’t, that purchaser can be held responsible.

Sean B. Palmer, the “virtual executor” of Aaron Swartz, subsequently asked Verso to remove the watermarks. They refused and it lit a fire under the Institute for Biblio-Immunology (IBI).

After a long process dissecting BooXtream’s ‘Social DRM’ the researchers have now published a lengthy communique which reveals how the watermarking system works and can be defeated.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, IBI says its motivation is clear. Books should inform buyers, not breach their privacy.

“Books should be used as tools for disseminating knowledge and information. What ‘social DRM’ watermarking systems do instead is turn books into tools of surveillance and oppression by monitoring who shares what knowledge, where,” IBI explain.

“We don’t like this, and because the publisher Verso has refused to remove the watermarks themselves, we decided to do it for them, and to show everyone how these systems work.”

But there are bigger issues at stake. While people in the West take the freedom to read books of their choosing for granted, not everyone has that luxury.

“Imagine if a watermarked ebook contains someone’s name (as many do). Suppose that someone is reading that watermarked ebook under a regime that bans the particular kind of material covered in that book,” IBI add.

“If the operatives of the regime see the watermark, they would then be able to arrest and perhaps even execute the purchaser of the ebook if they too are living under the same regime.”

But matters of life and death aside, IBI say they believe that people should not only be able to read whatever they want, they should also be able to share that knowledge with others.

“That’s how information spreads across cultures, through unrestrained, free propagation of knowledge. Watermarking systems attempt to corrupt these vectors of knowledge transmission by identifying and then filing legal action against some readers,” they conclude.

The lengthy report can be found here. Much of it is fairly technical but in a follow-up email, IBI pointed TF to a Github page containing a script to automate the processes detailed in their communique.

It’s likely that BooXtream will respond to this provocation so the war for free access to information and privacy isn’t over just yet.

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

After new legislation was passed last year, the first site-blocking cases were filed in Federal Court during the early part of 2016.

Two major industry players are putting the legislation to the test, with Roadshow Films (the movie division of Village Roadshow) and TV giant Foxtel both seeking to have several pirate sites blocked at the ISP level.

Foxtel wants to render The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, isoHunt and TorrentHound inaccessible in Australia. Roadshow is targeting streaming portal Solarmovie.

After a hearing in March, entertainment companies and local ISPs appeared in court again this week to thrash out the details. The ISPs aren’t putting up a fight against blocking per se, but there are still many practical issues to be agreed.

Section 115a of the Copyright Act states that ISPs can be forced to block an overseas “online location” if its purpose is to infringe copyright. To future-proof the law against new technologies, the term “online location” is intentionally broad. No surprise then that rightsholders argued this week that it encompasses blocking more than just IP addresses and URLs.

“[It’s] a broader shorthand reference for the idea that those responsible for the publication of the digital content at the website accessible by various URLs and IP addresses are within the broader definition of online location,” said Foxtel and Roadshow counsel Richard Lancaster.

What rightsholders are striving for is a situation similar to the one in the UK, where sites such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents are blocked but proxies and other workarounds can be easily added to existing injunctions. To date, rightsholders and ISPs have been unable to reach agreement on how such a mechanism can be implemented in Australia.

Today, there was further legal argument, and not unexpectedly the ISPs are at odds with several of the studios’ demands.

To cut down on costs, rightsholders want the ability to swiftly add mirrors and proxies to existing blocking orders after formally advising ISPs. They say this will streamline the process and ensure that new blocks are put in place within 15 days.

However, ISPs Telstra, Optus, TPG and M2 say that rightsholders should have to obtain new court orders for each “workaround” site that appears.

Counsel for Telstra said that taking the official route would not entail much more work than informally filing a request with ISPs. According to an ITNews report, the rightsholders disagreed.

“This is a known problem in the real world. It will be a problem that arises in the implementation of your honor’s orders,” Richard Lancaster said.

“And we’re concerned – given this is the first [blocking] case – that a procedure be adopted that will not create a real administrative burden for the future in having to do something unnecessary and elaborate such as the [ISPs] suggest.”

Arguing the case for a simplified process, Lancaster said that in the unlikely event of a problem while executing an informal website block, any issues could be quickly be presented to the court for resolution.

“It’s not a proportionate response to the likelihood that these secondary [proxy and mirror] sites will be popping up for the copyright owners to be required to brief lawyers, pay them to prepare an affidavit, file it and serve it and so on. An out of court notification is sufficient by way of technical notice and practical operation.”

While the sides continue to butt heads over the mechanics of blocking, the not insignificant matter of who will pay also persists. Predictably, rightsholders feel that ISPs should foot the bill. ISPs think otherwise.

Arguing that ISPs are “successful and wealthy organizations,” Lancaster said that the costs of blocking are both minimal and “comfortable” for them to bear. And if ISPs are paying, that will provide them with an incentive to keep costs down.

“In England the rights holders don’t have to pay for implementation because it’s regarded as being part of the business of carrying out the business of an ISP,” Lancaster said.

“The [rights holders] can’t control the cost of implementation. If the [ISPs] bear the cost, that will encourage the most efficient and cost effective way of blocking. It’s appropriate that if the law requires that illegal or infringing content be blocked or stopped, and that requires some action on the part of [ISPs], they should bear those costs.”

And the rightsholders aren’t stopping there. Not only do they want ISPs to cover the costs of blocking, they want them to foot all of the legal bills too.

“They’re the ones that turned it into a contested hearing, putting on evidence and rounds of hearings,” Lancaster told the court.

The hearings continue.

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