Author: Ernesto

With well over 150 million active users a month uTorrent is by far the most used BitTorrent client around.

In addition, the software also has a dedicated community forums with tens of thousands of visitors per day, and over 388,000 registered members.

According to a recent security alert these users would be to update their passwords, as the forum database has been compromised by hackers.

The uTorrent team, which is part of BitTorrent Inc, was alerted to the issue by one of their vendors earlier this week. While the vulnerability didn’t originate at the uTorrent forums, it was indirectly compromised.

“The vulnerability appears to have been through one of the vendor’s other clients, however it allowed attackers to access some information on other accounts. As a result, attackers were able to download a list of our forum users,” uTorrent writes.

The security alert is posted in the forums but as far as we know users haven’t been notified individually. There is no mention of the massive security breach on uTorrent and BitTorrent’s social media accounts either.

uTorrent forums with security warning

According to the uTorrent team it’s not entirely clear what data has been compromised by the hack. The company’s vendor has made some changes to mitigate the fallout, but the hashed passwords are likely compromised.

“We are investigating further to learn if any other information was accessed. Our vendor has made backend changes so that the hashes in the file do not appear to be a usable attack vector,” the uTorrent team writes.

“As a precaution, we are advising our users to change their passwords. While the passwords may not be used as a vector on the forums, those hashed passwords should be considered compromised,” they add.

In addition, users are strongly advised to update their passwords at other sites, if the ones they’re using are identical to the one deployed on the forum.

While uTorrent no longer reports the number of forum users, a few months ago it listed 388,358 members who together wrote over half a million posts.

The uTorrent forums use the Invision Power Board software. The same software also powers the separate BitTorrent forums, which given the lack of a security notice doesn’t appear to be compromised.

TorrentFreak asked BitTorrent Inc. which at which vendor the hack originated and whether it intends to communicate the issue to forum users in a more direct manner, but we have yet to hear back.

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

With millions of visitors per day KickassTorrents (KAT) is currently the most visited torrent site on the Internet.

As a result, copyright holders have taken aim at the site in recent years, resulting in ISP blockades in the UK, Finland and elsewhere. Soon, even Australia may be added to this list.

While these blocks are somewhat effective, there are also plenty of ways to circumvent them. KAT itself is operating various proxy sites, for example, and today it steps up its unblocking efforts by joining the dark web.

Through a newly launched domain KAT users can now access their favorite site on the Tor network. Tor, which stands for The Onion Router, is an encrypted anonymity network that can’t be easily blocked by ISPs.

“Good news for those who have difficulties accessing KAT due to the site block in their country, now you can always access KAT via this address lsuzvpko6w6hzpnn.onion on a TOR network,” Mr. White announces.

Tor users can access regular websites, but also dedicated Tor sites that use an .onion address. People who want to access these addresses have to be connected to the Tor network, through the special Tor browser for example.

TorrentFreak spoke to KAT’s Mr. White who informs us that an .onion address was added by popular request, making it easier for users to bypass even the strictest blockades.

KAT is not the first torrent site to become active on the Tor network. The Pirate Bay has had an .onion address for several years already. In addition, there are also several smaller torrent and warez communities active on the dark web.

Thus far the response from KAT users has been mostly positive, with many welcoming bridge to the dark web.

“This is fantastic news. I had quite some difficulties trying to log in. Now no more,” one user notes. Another one adds, “welcome to Tor KAT family, nothing beats sailing on the dark net.”

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

Earlier today we wrote about the Copyright Alliance’s critique of the US-based Public Interest Registry (PIR), which is responsible for .ORG domains.

The group called out the registry as hypocritical, as it allows “criminal” sites such as The Pirate Bay to use its service. A few hours later it turns out that this criticism didn’t come out of nowhere.

The Pirate Bay’s registrar EasyDNS reveals that the RIAA sent PIR a letter last week, urging it to suspend the Pirate Bay’s domain.

The music group lists several European court decisions against The Pirate Bay, including the criminal convictions of its founders in Sweden. It states that the torrent site is clearly operating illegally, and hopes the registry will take its domain name out of circulation.

According to the RIAA, The Pirate Bay violates PIR’s anti-abuse policy and terms of service. As such, it hopes that a court order isn’t required for the registry to take action.

“When, as in this case, there is overwhelming evidence of infringing and abusive activity on a domain, along with court orders from several jurisdictions with well-developed copyright jurisprudence, it cannot be the ‘right thing’ or ‘in the community interest’ to hold out for those decisions to be processed before the U.S. courts before taking action,” the RIAA writes.

RIAA’s letter to the Public Interest Registry

The RIAA’s letter was sent last week and thus far PIR has not taken any steps against the domain. Instead, it forwarded the RIAA’s letter to Pirate Bay’s registrar, the Canadian-based EasyDNS.

TorrentFreak spoke with EasyDNS CEO Mark Jeftovic, who informs us that he doesn’t want to be seen as a refuge for torrent sites. However, he is committed to protecting due process, and for now he sees no reason to suspend the domain name.

EasyDNS forwarded the letter to TPB and intriguingly, the site’s operator replied that they are DMCA compliant. In addition, they waved away any concerns about malware that was distributed through third-party ads.

Infringements or not, EasyDNS says its abuse policy only covers net abuse, not copyright matters. This means that in order to get a domain suspended the RIAA would need to present a local court order, or a foreign one that’s served through the Ontario Sheriff’s Office.

“We would need some kind of legal finding here in Ontario, or a foreign legal finding that has been duly served to us via the Ontario Sheriff’s Office,” Jeftovic tells us.

Alternatively, EasyDNS says it will accept the outcome of a formal proceeding under ICANN’s rules and regulations. However, it won’t take action against a one-sided complaint.

All in all, this means that the RIAA’s letter is unlikely to achieve the result they desire. This also begs the question, what’s next?

Although the RIAA would prefer to avoid a legal case against The Pirate Bay in the United States, if only to avoid the media attention, it appears that they have few other options left than to go to court.

Court case or not, the TPB team isn’t worried. They are not tied to the .ORG domain and can easily switch to an alternative.

“TPB is more than just a domain, it’s a movement, and taking down one domain will have zero effect on our inalienable right to share culture with our peers,” TPB’s Spud17 told us earlier today.

And so the whack-a-mole game is likely to continue.

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

Fearing a domain seizure, The Pirate Bay moved away from its original .ORG domain name four years ago.

At the time, domain names were being seized left and right and the site’s operators feared that the U.S. based domain registry might do their same with theirs.

Finding a suitable alternative was easier said than done, however. After losing more than a dozen subsequent domain names, TPB decided to switch back to the .ORG domain a few weeks ago.

The domain shuffle has been watched closely by various copyright holder groups, who previously pressured registries to suspend new Pirate Bay domains, often with success. However, thus far the .ORG’s Public Interest Registry (PIR) has not been very receptive to these calls.

This has angered several rightsholders, not least because the responsible registry is operating from the United States. Thus far their frustration has been voiced behind the scenes. However, the Copyright Alliance, which lists MPAA, RIAA and many prominent rightsholders as members, has now taken it public.

Copyright Alliance CEO Keith Kupferschmid calls out the registry for allowing The Pirate Bay to use one of its domain names, and urges the organization to suspend the site’s .ORG domain.

“It is shocking that a domain name registry in the United States – one that is dedicated to ‘the public interest’ – is allowing a blatantly illegal site to have a home on the .org domain,” Kupferschmid says.

“This is especially disturbing given that the operators of The Pirate Bay have been found guilty of criminal copyright infringement, The Pirate Bay domain names have been seized or suspended around the globe, and even its co-founder, Peter Sunde, has walked away from it,” he adds.

The Copyright Alliance calls out the registry as hypocritical, noting that it clearly states on its website that they’re committed to “always do[ing] the right thing” and that abuse of .org domains will not be tolerated.

While suspending TPB’s domain name is the right thing in the eyes of many rightsholders, players in the domain name industry don’t necessarily agree. Voluntarily disconnecting domains without due process is a far-reaching measure, and a line not all are willing to cross.

Also, the registry is less hypocritical than the Copyright Alliance claims. For example, on its website PIR clearly writes that their abuse policy doesn’t apply to copyright infringement issues, pointing to ICANN’s domain dispute resolution policy instead.

The .ORG registry hasn’t commented publicly on the matter, but it is very likely that they don’t want to take any action without a valid court order. This is the most objective procedure and one that copyright holders are clearly aware of.

Why Hollywood or the major music labels haven’t tried this yet is unknown. Just last year the RIAA managed to take several domains offline with proper court orders, which were processed relatively quickly.

The TPB-crew can’t really be bothered by the pressure on the registry. Even if the .ORG domain name is suspended, the site will continue operating on another one.

“TPB is more than just a domain, it’s a movement, and taking down one domain will have zero effect on our inalienable right to share culture with our peers,” TPB’s Spud17 tells us.

“Their petty targeting of one domain shows how ignorant they are of how the world works,” she adds.

The Copyright Alliance nonetheless hopes that PIR will respond ‘appropriately’ now that they’ve taken the matter public, and urges the registry to voluntarily suspend the Pirate Bay domain.

“The fact that PIR is presently providing a sanctuary for The Pirate Bay to continue its criminal behavior is unacceptable and should stop immediately,” Kupferschmid concludes.

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

This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

X-Men: Apocalypse is the most downloaded movie for the second week in a row.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(1)	X-Men: Apocalypse (HDCam/TC)	7.7 / trailer
2	(2)	13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi	7.4 / trailer
3	(…)	London Has Fallen	5.9 / trailer
4	(3)	Zootopia	8.3 / trailer
5	(6)	The Do Over (Webrip)	6.0 / trailer
6	(4)	Captain America: Civil War (TC)	8.4 / trailer
7	(…)	10 Cloverfield Lane	7.4 / trailer
8	(…)	The Angry Birds Movie	6.4 / trailer
9	(…)	Alice Through the Looking Glass	6.4 / trailer
10	(8)	Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (TS)	7.5 / trailer

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

Five years ago the MPAA and RIAA teamed up with several major U.S. Internet providers, announcing their plan to shift the norms and behavior of BitTorrent pirates.

The parties launched the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) and agreed on a system through which Internet account holders are warned if their connections are used to download pirated content.

After five or six warnings ISPs can take a variety of repressive measures, including bandwidth throttling and temporary Internet disconnections.

The system has been in place for several years now and is currently set to expire in October, before which the parties have to agree on its future course.

When the initiative was announced many people feared an active witch hunt and various horror stories about falsely accused grandmothers. But, now that several years have passed it’s the silence that stands out most.

It’s almost as if the much praised Copyright Alert System doesn’t exist at all.

Since its inception, CCI has issued no more than three press releases and any recent data on the scope and effectiveness of the program is lacking. The only figures that were published cover the first ten months, ending December 2013.

Hoping to fill this information void TorrentFreak has been asking for fresh data for years, but CCI repeatedly informed us that they have no new numbers to share.

Similarly, the institution’s official Twitter account has been gathering dust for almost a year, exemplifying the lack of communication.

This week we contacted CCI again, and although no data or concrete plans were unveiled, Executive Director Jim Kohlenberger was willing to shed some more light on the operation.

“The system continues to work smoothly, effectively, and as intended,” he says.

“We’ve seen that consumers are interested in the activity happening on their network, that they respond to educationally focused efforts, and are thirsty for more information on the amazing new ways to ethically access content where, when, and how they want.”

According to Kohlenberger there are growing signs that P2P piracy is on the decline, while use of legal content options is growing. Looking ahead, CCI’s director says the system will be further optimized.

“Going forward, we continue to look for opportunities to refine the system, and to advance our efforts and to elevate our consumer-focused mission in pragmatic ways,” Kohlenberger notes.

While the comments are positive, there are also some signs which suggest that there has been very little progress behind the scenes. The parties have been discussing future options for a long time already and thus far nothing has been set in stone.

After the original agreement expired last June it was extended for four months to give the parties some additional time to agree on possible changes. In October another three-month extension was put in place, followed by yet more extensions in February, March and April of this year.

This strange series of short extensions is odd, to say the least.

And while the future for the Copyright Alert System has yet to be decided, critique is swelling. Not just from pirates and activists, but also from copyright holders themselves as they can only send a limited number of complaints.

Last year a group of several independent movie studios called for the end of the system, describing it as a sham. Instead, the movie studios see more mileage in a Canadian notice-and-notice system, where they can send out as many warnings as they like.

Add to this that Australia just abandoned their proposed “strikes” scheme and the fact that Hollywood said it will no longer push for similar measures elsewhere, and the picture gets more and more grim.

Considering the above it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if the scheme terminated itself in the future, but CCI is obviously not hinting in that direction. However, we seriously doubt that things are going as smoothly as they are presented.

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

In an effort to combat piracy, copyright holders report millions of infringing links to Google on a daily basis.

Due to the high number of often automated notices and the fact that copyright holders don’t always check the validity of all requests, mistakes are a common occurrence.

An occasional mishap is understandable, of course, but this week we stumbled upon one of the worst series of takedown notices we have ever seen.

Over the course of a few days reporting organization Copyright UNIVERSAL asked Google to remove thousands of links from its search engine. In their listing we do indeed see some infringing URLs, but it’s the legal content that really stands out.

In fact, it is safe to say that no website is safe for the overzealous anti-piracy group.

Over the past week Copyright UNIVERSAL has asked Google to remove 4,224 URLs including various high profile sites. While we don’t have room to highlight all ‘mistakes,’ we’ve made a selection of some of the most outrageous errors.

Let’s start off with the MPAA, a fellow anti-piracy group which has called on Google to make sure that reported URLs remain offline. According to a recent notice from Copyright UNIVERSAL, their ratings page is clearly infringing.

The same is true for legal offerings from movie stores and streaming services, including Netflix, Amazon and Apple’s iTunes.

According to the notices, Google’s very own Play store is also copyright infringing.

In fact, even Hulu’s original series are not safe from the overactive anti-piracy group’s recent takedown spree.

But that’s just the beginning. Various Internet providers including Comcast, Verizon and Cox also offer entertainment online. This is not permitted according to Copyright UNIVERSAL which is targeting the respective sites in various takedown notices.

Then there are offline film broadcasting outlets, commonly known as movie theaters. These generally have a good relationship with copyright holders, but that doesn’t mean they can stay online.

The Copyright UNIVERSAL notices target several cinemas including the homepages of AMC Theaters and Vox Cinemas, as shown below.

The same is true for film rating sites such as Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, which are both targeted in several requests.

Turning it up a notch, the anti-piracy group is also cracking down on sports leagues, as both the NBA and NFL sites are targeted.

And what about the official movie homepage for The Huntsman: Winter’s War, tucked in between several news articles and other legitimate sites such as the Verge, The Age, The Australian and The Sun.

The list goes on and on and on….

After keeping a close eye on DMCA takedown mistakes over the past several years, these are by far the worst. Keep in mind that the above is just a small selection of all the inaccuracies, which can be found in full here.

Unfortunately it is not clear on whose authority Universal COPYRIGHT is acting. The sloppy anti-piracy outfit reportedly operates from India but that’s pretty much all we know at this point.

TorrentFreak reached out to Google, who said they would look into the matter, but we haven’t heard back since.

The good news is that thanks to Google’s sharp eye none of the inaccurately reported links have been removed. So even if Copyright UNIVERSAL continues its crusade against pretty much the entire Internet, it’s unlikely that it will succeed.

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

Among the broader public BitTorrent Inc. is mostly know as the parent company of the popular BitTorrent and uTorrent software applications.

The two file-sharing clients, which have a base of roughly 170 million monthly users, are also the main sources of revenue for the venture capital-backed company.

Over the years BitTorrent has tried to launch many other applications and services to diversify its revenue stream, but these efforts haven’t been very successful.

One of the best received projects is perhaps “Sync,” a Dropbox competitor that allows users to securely sync folders across multiple devices using the BitTorrent protocol. Within a few months the new tool had over a million users sharing dozens of petabytes of data.

Despite this success, BitTorrent Inc. is now saying farewell to the Sync application which it will spinoff into a new company.

Name Resilio, the new company will rebrand Sync as “Connect” and continue its development under the wings of BitTorrent’s former CEO Eric Klinker, Variety reports.

BitTorrent Inc., meanwhile, will increase its focus on media. This is something Klinker was hesitant about, as not all rightsholders are happy with BitTorrent’s role in the piracy ecosystem.

However, with two new CEO’s steering the ship the company has set sail for Los Angeles, where it will soon open a new office.

As part of the new strategy the company will focus on offering a wide range of ‘legitimate’ entertainment through several new applications.

This includes the recently announced BitTorrent Live service, which will launch with a wide variety of programming. Live streaming has been one of the main focuses of BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen for a long time, but the technology has yet to see its breakthrough.

In addition to streaming, the company will continue to promote artist “bundles” though their BitTorrent and uTorrent clients.

In recent years BitTorrent Inc. has had trouble building new revenue streams. Just last year it had to lay off one third of its workforce, so the company hopes that this new direction will pay off in the long run.

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

After a film premiers in theaters, movie fans usually have to wait a few months before they can get their hands on a DVD or Blu-Ray copy, depending on the local release strategy.

This delay tactic helps movie theaters to maximize their revenues. However, it might not be the best option for aftermarket sales, which typically account for the largest chunk of a movie’s revenues.

One factor that comes into play here is piracy. Due to artificial delays which vary across different parts of the world, pirates can often get their hands on a high quality rip of a movie before the DVD is officially released in their country.

A new study published by Carnegie Mellon University researchers has looked into this piracy “window of opportunity,” and found that release delays are actually hurting DVD and Blu-Ray sales.

Using real-world data the researchers investigated to what degree the availability of pirated movies during international release delays impact subsequent sales and found a clear positive relation.

“Our results suggest that an additional 10-day delay between the availability of digital piracy and the legitimate DVD release date in a particular country is correlated with a 2-3% reduction in DVD sales in that country,” the researchers write.

The results are robust and the researchers controlled for a variety of alternative explanations.

For example, a longer delay itself doesn’t have a significant effect on sales. Revenue is only impacted if this also results in a longer “piracy window.”

More proof that the effect is driven by piracy is that the sales drops are proportional to piracy levels in a country.

Data shared by various movie studios reveals that movie piracy in Spain is about six times larger than in other countries, an effect that’s also visible in the researchers’ analysis.

“When we run our regressions on Spain and Italy alone, we observe a 10% drop in sales for every 10-day delay in legal availability, as compared to a 2% drop in sales for every 10-day delay in the entire sample,” the paper reads.

Faced with these results, the paper suggests that besides going after pirates, Hollywood can also tweak its own business strategies to target the problem.

The researchers note that thanks to the interconnected nature of the Internet, a pirated film is shared all over the world within seconds of its release. This means that, as opposed to 15 years ago, delayed international movie releases may do more harm than good.

“Our results suggest that studios and exhibitors should reconsider delayed international movie releases in the presence of global piracy,” the paper reads, adding that shorter delays “may have positive spillover effects in the form of reduced piracy in the DVD window.”

The research was carried out as part of Carnegie Mellon University’s Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics, which receives significant funding from the MPAA. However, the researchers state that their work is carried out independently.

Whether the MPAA will take up the advixe has yet to be seen, but it’s good to see that the study confirms that movie studios themselves can also do more to address the piracy issue.

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

As one of its ‘hottest’ properties, HBO has become very protective of Game of Thrones.

In recent weeks thousands of pirates have received warnings in their mailboxes, and the company is also fervently trying to take down links to pirated copies of the show, with some success.

Besides targeting full copies of episodes, HBO also appears to have an eye on unauthorized compilations that focus on scenes without costumes, which are quite a common occurrence.

Sites such as Pornhub list thousands of clips of Khaleesi, Margaery Tyrell, Melisandre and others, fully uncovered. While this isn’t a new trend HBO now says that it’s taking action in response.

“HBO is aware of the issue and is in the process of getting material taken down from Pornhub,” the company said in a statement.

A quick search revealed that a lot of compromising material is still readily available, but some videos have indeed been removed. This includes the Daenerys Targaryen compilation video below.

Daenerys Targaryen’s compilation video is gone

Since the videos are uploaded by Pornhub users the site itself enjoys safe harbor protection. This means that there’s little else HBO can do other than issue regular takedown requests to protect their assets.

That said, Pornhub is well-aware of the interest in Game of Thrones. In an ‘insights‘ article last month the site analized various trends. Among other things it reported a massive spike in GoT searches before this year’s season premiere.

Popular search terms include “sex scene,” “khaleesi,” “boobs,” “nude” and “parody” while further analysis revealed that Emilia Clarke (Khaleesi) was also by far the most popular Game of Thrones actress on the porn site.

Hot GoT actresses

Of course HBO has the right to remove the infringing footage, but the company has reportedly targeted various porn parodies as well. These can in theory be contested, but thus far we haven’t seen any signs of this.

Interestingly, HBO is not the only company that’s worried about having their brand on prominent display at the porn site. A few days ago several users reported that Blizzard began cracking down on Overwatch inspired porn on Pornhub as well.

Whether HBO’s actions will be good enough to keep GoT nude videos from spreading has yet to be seen. Once something’s on the Internet, it’s generally pretty hard to take down, and highlighting the problem may even have an adverse effect.

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