Author: Ernesto

In recent years Hollywood has taken a rather aggressive approach against Google. The movie studios believe that the search engine isn’t doing enough to limit piracy, and have demanded more stringent measures.

One of the suggestions often made is to boost the visibility of legal movie services in search results. For example, show a list of streaming and download portals when users search for a movie.

In recent months Google has experimented with exactly this. People who search for classic “pirate” terms may see ads for legal options. In addition, the search engine now shows a snippet with all sorts of movie details when people search for a title.

This movie information also includes reviews and ratings from around the web, with links to IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic and other prominent sites. A useful feature for sure, but Hollywood will not like all of the sites that are featured.

Among various established sources, Google is also showing ratings from the “pirate” streaming site FMovies. As can be seen below, FMovies user ratings are tucked between IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, using the rather inviting title “Watch Free Movies Online.”

Watch Free Movies Online (context, different search)

While FMovies ratings only appear incidentally, we have seen it across different browsers and on both desktop and mobile searches.

The link in question points directly to the FMovies page where a high quality stream of the film is readily available. In addition, users can opt to download it directly to their computer or mobile device.

Love (2015)

The FMovies ratings appear in the movie snippet because FMovies is using Google’s review markup. This allows any site to be featured there, when it complies with all the quality guidelines.

When Google announced the ratings feature last year it said it offers “publishers with an opportunity to increase the discoverability and consumption of their reviews using markup,” but we doubt that pirate sites are meant to be included.

Ironically, one of the tools that is supposed to divert people from pirate searches is now used to link people to one directly. Mistake or not, the movie studios will use these and other examples to argue that Google still has a long way to go.

Meanwhile, FMovies is enjoying the free traffic, for as long as it lasts.

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

Most of the site’s current users are probably unaware that without a few essential keystrokes in the site’s early years, The Pirate Bay may have not been here today.

May 31, 2006, less than three years after The Pirate Bay was founded, 65 Swedish police officers entered a datacenter in Stockholm.

The policemen had instructions to shut down the Pirate Bay’s servers, which were already seen as a major threat to the entertainment industry.

At the time The Pirate Bay wasn’t the giant it is today though. And ironically, the raid only made the site bigger, stronger and more resilient.

While the police were about to enter the datacenter, Pirate Bay founders Gottfrid and Fredrik got wind that something was up.

In the months before the raid they were already being watched by private investigators day and night, but this time something was about to happen to their trackers.

At around 10am in the morning Gottfrid told Fredrik that there were police officers at their office, and asked him to get down to the co-location facility and get rid of the ‘incriminating evidence,’ although none of it, whatever it was, was related to The Pirate Bay.

As Fredrik was leaving, he suddenly realized that the problems might be linked to their tracker. He therefore decided to make a full backup of the site, just in case.

When he later arrived at the co-location facility the concerns turned out to be justified. There were dozens of policemen floating around taking away dozens of servers, most of which belonged to clients unrelated to The Pirate Bay.

Footage from The Pirate Bay raid

In the days that followed it became clear that Fredrik’s decision to start a backup of the site was probably the most pivotal moment in the site’s history. Because of this backup Fredrik and the rest of the Pirate Bay team managed to resurrect the site within three days.

Of course, the entire situation was handled with the mockery TPB had become known for.

Unimpressed, the site’s operators renamed the site “The Police Bay” complete with a new logo shooting cannon balls at Hollywood. A few days later this logo was replaced by a Phoenix, a reference to the site rising from its digital ashes.

Logos after the raid

Instead of shutting it down the raid brought the site into the mainstream press, not least due to its swift resurrection. All the publicity also triggered a huge traffic spike for TPB, exactly the opposite effect Hollywood had hoped for.

Despite a criminal investigation leading to convictions for the site’s founders, The Pirate Bay kept growing and growing in the years that followed.

The site’s assets, meanwhile, were reportedly transferred to the Seychelles-based company Reservella.

Under new ownership several major technical changes occurred. In the fall of 2009 the infamous BitTorrent tracker was taken offline, turning The Pirate Bay into a torrent indexing site.

Early 2012 The Pirate Bay went even further when it decided to cease offering torrent files for well-seeded content. The site’s operators moved to magnet links instead, allowing them to save resources while making it easier for third-party sites to run proxies.

These proxies turned out to be much-needed, as The Pirate Bay is now the most broadly censored website on the Internet. In recent years ISPs all around the world have been ordered by courts to block subscriber access to the torrent site.

While TPB swiftly recovered from the “original” raid, it did suffer nearly two months of downtime late 2014 when another raid took place.

Initially it was believed that some of the site’s crucial servers were taken by the police, but the TPB team later said that it was barely hit and that they took the site offline as a precaution.

While the first raid make The Pirate Bay stronger, the two-month stint of downtime was a big hit. While the site still has millions of visitors per day, it is no longer the most dominant player, and is still suffering from regular outages.

That said, The Pirate Bay is expected to live on and on. To celebrate its turbulent past the site’s operators declared May 31 to be Pirate Independence Day a few years ago.

“Let today be the pirates’ Independence Day! Today we celebrate the victories we’ve had and the victories that will come. Today we celebrate that we’re united in our efforts. Keep on seeding!” the TPB team said at the time.

But remember, if there hadn’t been a recent backup back in 2006, things may have turned out quite differently.

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

With over a billion users YouTube is the largest video portal on the Internet.

Every day users watch hundreds of millions of hours of video on the site, and for many it’s a prime source to enjoy music as well.

While YouTube is a blessing to thousands of content creators, there are also concerns among rightsholders. Music labels in particular are not happy with the fact that music videos can be easily downloaded from the site with help from external services.

To address the problem YouTube is contacting these third party sites, urging them to shut down this functionality. Most recently, YouTube’s legal team contacted the popular download service TubeNinja.

“It appears from your website and other marketing materials that TubeNinja is designed to allow users to download content from YouTube,” the email from YouTube’s legal team reads.

According to YouTube the video downloader violates the terms of service (ToS) of both the site and the API. Among other things, YouTube’s ToS prohibits the downloading of any video that doesn’t have a download link listed on the site.

Later, Google’s video service adds that if the site owner continues to operate the service this “may result in legal consequences.”

Email from YouTube’s legal team

Despite the threatening language, TubeNinja owner Nathan doesn’t plan to take the functionality offline. He informed YouTube that his service doesn’t use YouTube’s API and says that it’s the responsibility of his users to ensure that they don’t violate the ToS of YouTube and TubeNinja.

“Our own ToS clearly states that the user is responsible for the legitimacy of the content they use our service for,” Nathan tells us.

TubeNinja doesn’t believe that YouTube has a very strong case and Nathan has asked the company for clarification. He also mentions that Google’s very own Chrome service lists many plugins that offer the exact same functionality.

“They don’t even seem to enforce removal of Chrome plugins that enable users to do the exact same thing,” Nathan says.

“Also the fact that services like Savefrom, Keepvid, clipconverter etc have been around since 2008, we find it hard to believe that there is any legal case at all. Kind of like suing a maker of VHS-recorders for users taping the television broadcast,” he adds.

This isn’t the first time that YouTube has taken action against download services. The site has gone after similar sites in the past

In 2012 Google went after Youtube-mp3.org with a message similar to the one TubeNinja received, but despite these efforts the site remains one of the most used conversion tools with millions of visitors per day.

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

This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

X-Men: Apocalypse is the most downloaded movie.

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	(6)	X-Men: Apocalypse (HDCam)	7.7 / trailer
2	(…)	13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi	7.4 / trailer
3	(1)	Zootopia	8.3 / trailer
4	(2)	Captain America: Civil War (TC)	8.4 / trailer
5	(…)	Hardcore Henry (HDrip – subbed)	7.0 / trailer
6	(…)	The Do Over (Webrip)	6.0 / trailer
7	(3)	Gods of Egypt	5.6 / trailer
8	(10)	Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (TS)	7.5 / trailer
9	(8)	Deadpool	8.6 / trailer
10	(7)	How To Be Single (Web-DL)	6.2 / trailer

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

Like many other Hollywood studios, Paramount Pictures sees online piracy as a major threat to its revenues.

Torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents represent a thorn in the side and the company is doing everything in its power to limit the damage.

For Paramount this includes tracking down and warning individual users of these sites. Generally speaking, rightsholders monitor people who share recent blockbusters or TV-shows, but there are exceptions.

TorrentFreak has learned that the Hollywood studio started sending takedown notices targeting Internet subscribers whose accounts were used to download and share an episode of the 1972 classic The Godfather.

With help from its anti-piracy partner IP-Echelon the studio is contacting ISPs, asking the companies to “disable” the copyright infringements and make sure that their subscribers stop sharing the film.

“We are requesting your immediate assistance in removing and disabling access to the infringing material from your network. We also ask that you ensure the user and/or IP address owner refrains from future use and sharing of Paramount materials and property,” the letter reads, listing the technical details.

In addition, Paramount urges the ISP not to destroy any data such as IP-address logs, even if the retention period has expired. The movie studio mentions that this data may be required if a lawsuit is filed at a later stage.

“In complying with this notice, [ISP] should not destroy any evidence, which may be relevant in a lawsuit, relating to the infringement alleged, including all associated electronic documents and data relating to the presence of infringing items on your network, which shall be preserved while disabling public access, irrespective of any document retention or corporate policy to the contrary.”

The lawsuit mention may cause some file-sharers to panic, but is likely little more than a mafia-inspired threat. Paramount is generally not known to file cases against individual file-sharers, even though it has sent out many similar takedown notices in the past.

In fact, many Hollywood studios and other rightsholders send out similar letters, such as HBO with recent episodes of Game of Thrones. That said, the Godfather notice is by far the “oldest” we have seen, which makes it record-worthy.

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

Over the past two decades the Business Software Alliance (BSA) has represented major software companies, including Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and Symantec, in their fight against under-licensed businesses.

This has resulted in audits at thousands of companies worldwide, whose computers are carefully inspected to see if the business owner has failed to pay his or her dues.

While companies are often contractually obliged to comply with such audits, BSA’s selection procedures are raising eyebrows.

Since a few years the industry group has been actively soliciting tips from the public about potentially infringing companies. Promising hard cash rewards, it asks “whistleblowers” to expose any wrongdoing.

BSA generally follows up these tips with a threatening letter to the business owner in which it requests an audit, something they are contractually obliged to agree to.

If unlicensed software is found during an audit, the group generally follows up with a demand for damages, which can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars for some companies.

To find out more about the process TorrentFreak spoke with Robert J. Scott, managing partner at Scott & Scott, LLP., who has represented hundreds of defendants in BSA related cases over the past couple of years.

According to Scott a typical audit request comes after “a tip by a disgruntled employee or former employee, often seeking to recover advertised reward money.”

Many of Scott’s clients liken BSA’s tactics to a form of extortion, but he prefers not to use this term. In principle he believes that software companies have the right to protect their work. However, he certainly doesn’t agree with BSA practices.

The reward money in particular is problematic as it tends to attract disgruntled people who have a history with the company. For example, a fired employee who hopes to cash in while getting back at a former boss.

“I challenge the payment of reward money to disgruntled employees,” Scott says. “I also have been opposed to the method of calculating damages in BSA cases as being contrary to law.”

The damages awards demanded in these cases are typically three times the regular licensing fee, and can easily run to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the number of computers that are in use.

In a recent article for TechCrunch Scott shares the story of Fuzzy’s Radiator, a Texas automotive repair company. In a threatening letter the BSA accused the company of running unlicensed Microsoft products, stating that it could owe millions of dollars for the alleged infringement.

The timing of the letter was interesting, as it came in shortly after Fuzzy’s Radiator’s in-house IT person left the company. “I think the disgruntled former employee was trying to bring down the company,” Fuzzy Radiator’s Trinda Lopez said.

Facing a potential bankruptcy, the company decided to freeze employee salaries and postpone the purchase of new equipment. Eventually, the dispute was settled for a fraction of the initial demand.

While some business owners may run unlicensed software on purpose, this is certainly not always the case. Sometimes the software is installed by relative outsiders, or IT personnel who decide to skip the licensing part on their own accord.

Intentional or not, if the BSA comes knocking it’s bound to get costly. Scott hopes that small business owners will become more aware of the potential risk and ensure that their licenses are in order.

“After handling over 250 cases by BSA, what I have learned is that small business owners can’t trust IT to manage software license compliance,” Scott tells us.

Finally, it’s worth keeping in mind that BSA uses the prospect of excessive penalties to intimidate companies and elicit fear. With a proper defense the actual settlements turn out to be much lower.

Too bad for the disgruntled employee, who gets a stake of the settlement.

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

To make it harder for pirates to get their hands on the latest blockbusters, all popular Blu-rays and HD streams have content protection.

HDCP is the standard in the field. The technology, which is owned by Intel daughter company DCP, makes it hard to rip HD content, but not impossible.

Earlier this year DCP and Warner Bros. filed two lawsuits against companies that sell hardware which can effectively bypass HDCP 2.2 content protection.

The first lawsuit against a Chinese company was settled last month, with the rightsholders on the ‘losing’ end. However, this week DCP and Warner Bros. have something to celebrate.

The two companies signed a settlement with the California-based hardware seller Ace Deal, which admits to violating their rights under the DMCA. Ace Deal sold so-called HDCP strippers, devices that allow users to render protected video content in the clear, circumventing the copy protection.

The parties have submitted a joint proposal for a final judgment and a permanent injunction at a California federal court. According to the documents (pdf) Ace Deal sold 2,078 circumvention devices in recent years.

Not only does the hardware seller admit guilt, it has also agreed to a hefty damages amount of $5,250,000, which is quite something for such a small company.

In addition to the money, the settlement includes a permanent injunction that prohibits Ace Deal and its employees from offering similar products in the future.

They are ordered to refrain from “importing, manufacturing, offering to the public, providing, selling, using, or otherwise trafficking in any technology, product, service, device, component or part thereof that is primarily designed or produced to circumvent HDCP…”

The court still has to sign off on the proposed orders but that’s expected to be a formality. Meanwhile, Ace Deal has already removed the offending products from its website.

While this case shows a lot of similarities with the one filed against the Chinese company LegendSky, the outcome is entirely different. LegendSky was also accused of “stripping” HDCP copy protection, but these claims didn’t stick.

LegendSky successfully argued their 4K splitter device does not “strip” any HDCP copy protection. Instead, it merely downgrades the higher HDCP protection to a lower version, which is permitted as an exception under the DMCA.

For Ace Deal this argument does not apply so they are left with millions in debt. At least on paper, which may not always be true.

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

In an effort to appease Hollywood’s major studios, Netflix increased its efforts to block customers who circumvent geo-blockades this year.

As a result it has become harder to use VPN services to access Netflix content from other countries. However, the measures also affect well-intentioned customers who merely use a VPN to protect their privacy.

This broad blocking policy has sparked wide protests and tens of thousands Internet users have signed a petition launched by digital rights group OpenMedia, which asks Netflix to stop the VPN crackdown.

A few weeks ago OpenMedia sent an open letter to Netflix, inviting CEO Reed Hastings to discuss possible alternatives. In absence of a reply, the group is now following up with a new message that’s unmissable.

This week a massive mobile billboard is driving through the streets of Los Gatos, California, where Netflix headquarters are located. The billboard carries the message “We ♥ Our Privacy,” with the URL of the VPN unblocking campaign.

OpenMedia hopes that the billboard will send a clear message. The protests are not going to stop and with thousands of new signers per week the campaign is gaining momentum.

“Right now, Netflix customers are being forced to choose between watching their favorite shows and safeguarding their privacy,” OpenMedia’s digital rights specialist Laura Tribe says.

“Our mobile billboard is one more way we’re working to encourage Netflix to rethink their approach. The company has much better options available to it, than undermining the privacy of over 80 million paying Netflix customers in the post-Snowden world.”

OpenMedia understands that Netflix has to comply with Hollywood’s demands to restrict access, but it believes that there a there are better ways to make sure that geographic restrictions are enforced. For example, by simply linking content libraries to credit card addresses.

Thus far Netflix hasn’t been very receptive to the concerns. During an investor call last month Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that the recent crackdown on VPN users hasn’t hurt the company’s results, and that the complaints came from a “small but vocal minority.”

A ‘small’ minority with a huge billboard…

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

For more than a decade researchers have been looking into the effects of online music piracy on the revenues of the record industry, with mixed results.

Both positive or negative effects have been reported, often varying based on the type of artist, music genre and media, among other variables.

That said, research has more often found that piracy hurts overall music sales, and an extensive new report from the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) confirms this trend.

The new study uses an elaborate model to quantify the effect of piracy on music sales, which it puts at 5.2% for the EU as a whole in 2014. This means that piracy resulted in €170 million in lost revenue across the EU.

The effects on digital sales are the most pronounced, €113 million compared to €57 million for physical products.

In addition to the direct effect on the music industry, there is also a secondary loss of €166 million in other sectors, and a €63 million loss in government revenue through direct and indirect taxes. The study doesn’t look at any positive effects, such as a possible increase in media player sales.

Interestingly, the estimated piracy losses are not equal across the EU. In absolute numbers they are the highest in the UK, with €48.6 in direct losses. This makes sense as it’s one of the largest music markets.

Relatively speaking the piracy effects are the most pronounced in Spain and Greece, with losses of 8.2% and 8% respectively. Croatia and Hungary are least affected, with both under 4%.

It is worth noting that the reported lost sales are a the expected additional revenue if people wouldn’t have pirated the music. It doesn’t count every pirated track as a lost sale, nor does it estimate the potential revenue if piracy wouldn’t exist at all.

Commenting on the results, EUIPO’s Executive Director António Campinos says that the current findings offer additional evidence in the ongoing piracy debate.

“The question of whether piracy reduces or increases sales of recorded music has been the subject of many studies with contradictory results,” he says.

“Our study’s results are in line with the prevailing consensus and find that piracy reduces the revenue of legitimate industry in both digital and physical formats,” Campinos adds.

Interestingly, the findings presented this week contradict an earlier EU study which revealed that online piracy doesn’t hurt digital music revenues. So, whether this week’s study will be the end of the ongoing debate about the effects of piracy remains to be seen.

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

Earlier this year the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a proposal that will allow consumers to swap expensive cable boxes for third-party devices and apps.

The rules are meant to promote competition and get rid of the inflated rates cable TV viewers have to pay for using the devices that their providers typically supply.

The proposal was welcomed by President Obama, but is meeting fierce resistance from copyright holders and cable providers, who fear a piracy surge and brand devaluation.

“Devices and applications to facilitate piracy exist today, but the proposal would make them more attractive and more harmful,” the MPAA writes this week, noting that pirate sites will use changes to their advantage.

“It would endanger the entire video distribution ecosystem by disregarding licensing requirements, jeopardizing content security, and promoting piracy and theft of service,” NBC Universal and Comcast adds in their reply comment.

While the positions above are typical of the copyright industry, there is a notable exception. Comments submitted by the Writers Guild of America West (WGAW) this week suggest that piracy fears are being overblown.

This is an unexpected stance from a labor union represents thousands of screen writers in Hollywood and Southern California, many of whom work for the major movie and TV studios.

Instead of repeating the piracy concerns, the writers believe that it’s crucial to offer the public more choice and they expect that the proposal will benefit both consumers and content creators.

“While fears of piracy have been raised in this proceeding, the WGAW’s careful analysis is that the Commission’s rules can promote competition and protect content,” WGAW writes.

Soon?

The proposed rules strike a balance between promoting competition and protecting content, the union argues. By promoting competition, increased availability and cheaper alternatives, piracy may actually diminish.

“While new technology can create some business uncertainty, there is strong evidence that pro-consumer developments that make legal content more accessible to viewers benefits both consumers and content creators,” the writers note.

“The current pay-TV set-top box market is controlled by incumbent distributors who charge consumers high fees and exercise their gatekeeping power to limit content competition.”

WGAW suggests that the piracy fears of many rightsholders are overblown. They point out that on the “open Internet” piracy is also possible, but that hasn’t stopped innovative legal services from flourishing.

“A competitive navigation device market poses no greater risk of piracy than the open Internet, where the legal video streaming market has become lucrative and dominates Internet traffic.”

The new FCC rules would encourage innovation, much as the open Internet has done. As a result WGAW believes that consumers will be able to have broader access to entertainment at a reasonable price, which should benefit the industry as a whole.

“With the open Internet we are beginning to see what is possible in a more competitive landscape. The proposed rules for a competitive navigation device market are a logical and necessary next step in giving consumers more choice and further opening the content market to competition,” the writers union concludes.

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