Author: Ernesto

Earlier this year Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios filed a lawsuit against the makers of the Star Trek inspired fan film, accusing them of copyright infringement.

The dispute centers around the well-received short film Star Trek: Prelude to Axanar and the planned follow-up feature film Anaxar.

The project is an idea from Alec Peters who started working on it half a decade ago. The short film turned in to a massive hit and quickly raised more than $100,000 through crowdfunding, and the follow-up feature raised another $638,000 on Kickstarter alone.

That’s a serious budget for a fan-art project and the success prompted the attention of both Paramount Pictures and CBS Studios, who filed their complaint at a California federal court last December.

Among other things, the Star Trek rightsholder claimed ownership over various Star Trek related settings, characters, species, clothing, colors, shapes, words, short phrases and even the Klingon language.

This week, Axanar productions and Alec Peters responded to the allegations put forward in the complaint (pdf). According to the makers of the fan film, several of the allegedly “infringing elements” are not protected by copyright to begin with.

In their reply the filmmakers argue that words and short phrases such as names, titles and slogans can’t be protected. This includes the popular phrase “beam me up” as well as several Star Trek related names.

“…the names Garth of Izar, Soval, Richard Robau, and John Gill are not protectable, and neither are the words Andorians, Tellarites, Romulans, Axanar, Archanis IV, Q’onoS, Nausicaa, Rigel, Andoria, Tellar Prime, Vulcans, Klingons, Terra, Starship Enterprise, Starfleet, Federation, Starships, Stardate, and Federation or the short phrase ‘beaming up’,” they write.

In addition, Axanar productions points out that Paramount and CBS can’t claim ownership of the Klingon language, which is nothing more than an idea according to the defendants.

“The Klingon language itself is an idea or a system, and is not copyrightable,” they write.

“The mere allegation that Defendants used the Klingon language, without any allegation that Defendants copied Plaintiffs’ particular expression of that language, is therefore insufficient to state a claim for copyright infringement as to any protected element.”

Vulcan comparison

The defendants continue by stressing that the use of the Vulcan appearance and the Heat-Ray Phaser weapons are not unique to Star Trek. They are common appearances in nature and / or have been used in fictional works before.

“Vulcan appearance: a species with ‘pointy ears’ is not original to Star Trek, and has appeared in many fictional fantasy works depicting imaginary humanoid species predating Star Trek, including, but not limited to, vampires, elves, fairies, and werewolves, as well as in many animals in nature.”

“Phasers are also known as Heat-Ray weapons, which have existed in science fiction since H.G. Wells’ ‘War of the Worlds’ in 1898,” the complaint notes.

Besides the questions Axanar raises over the copyright protections, they also argue that the allegations aren’t specific enough, since it’s not specified which exact copyrights have been infringed.

“While Plaintiffs allege that they own ‘more than 700’ Star Trek television episodes, a dozen motion pictures, and four books, they still fail to specify which of those copyrights Defendants have allegedly infringed,” the write.

As a result, Axanar Productions asks the court to dismiss or strike the copyright claims in question.

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

With hundreds of million of active users, Instagram is often asked to remove copyrighted material being shared on its servers without permission.

If rightsholders submit a takedown request, Instagram swiftly takes the infringing content down. At least, that’s what it is supposed to do.

A new lawsuit filed in a California federal court suggests that Instagram’s takedown procedure is not always as effective as it should be.

This week Wisconsin-based photographer Jennifer Rondinelli Reilly filed a complaint (pdf) against Instagram in which she accuses the service of hosting or linking to one of her works without permission.

The work in question is an image of red lips and a microphone, which was registered at the U.S. Copyright Office in 2013. The image in question is used on several occasions, including in the profile below.

One of the alleged infringing uses

After discovering the unauthorized use of her work the photographer sent Instagram dozens of DMCA takedown requests. However, according to the complaint Instagram failed to take action in response.

“Reilly sent DMCA notices to Instagram regarding the Infringing Uses on January 26, 2016, January 27, 2016, January 28, 2016,” the complaint reads.

“Reilly never authorized the Infringing Uses,” the complaint states, adding that the images are still present on the site. “Instagram has not removed or disabled access to the Infringing Uses.”

At the time of writing several of the reported images have been removed. However, the profile picture shown above is still present and the same is true for other copies of the image on Instagram.

To resolve the matter, Reilly requests a permanent injunction against the service, as well as statutory damages for the alleged losses she has suffered.

This is not the first time the photographer has gone after a social network. A few months ago she filed a similar lawsuit against Twitter. This case was dismissed not much later, but it’s unclear if both parties reached a settlement out of court.

A few weeks ago Reilly also sued Buzzfeed for copyright infringement and the case is still ongoing.

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

With millions of unique visitors per day KickassTorrents (KAT) has become the most-used torrent site on the Internet, beating even The Pirate Bay.

The site also has a very active community of torrent aficionados from all over the world. On March 30, staff and members come together to celebrate their beloved pastime on ‘Happy Torrents Day‘.

“Five years ago we realized that what our users do on KickAssTorrents, what they believe in and enjoy, needed celebrating. A day to give back to them what they give to us,” KAT administrator Mr. Black tells TorrentFreak.

“Every torrent community is different and individual in its own way but we all believe in freedom of sharing and of course share one of the most important things in common. Torrents.”

Happy Torrents Day

The event was initially started by KAT administrator Mr. Pink in 2011. It began as a small celebration, but over the years it has turned into a recurring tradition with many thousands of people participating.

Last year more than 115,000 registered users checked in. The number of uploads also increased significantly on Happy Torrents Day, well above the 4,000 torrents that were added on an average day that year. This year, the KAT team hopes to break this record.

“Torrents Day in 2015 took us to just short of 6,000 torrents uploaded… 5,775 to be exact. But due to the users we have gained and the services provided we are expecting to well exceed these numbers,” Mr. Black says.

The KAT staff have put together an overview of the various challenges and events. For example, users can add their favorite song to the official soundtrack, or participate in the upload challenge.

If everything goes according to plan Torrents Day 2016 is expected to drive a lot of traffic to the site and perhaps set several new records. Judging from the discussion already going on, there’s definitely plenty of interest for this young tradition.

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

Late last year several pirated copies of 4K videos started to leak from both Netflix and Amazon. These leaks were unusual as online 4k streams were always well protected against pirates.

While it’s still not clear how these videos were copied, several sources suggested that one of LegendSky’s latest HDFury devices may have been involved.

These suspicions were corroborated a few weeks ago when Warner Bros. and Intel daughter company Digital Content Protection (DCP) sued the HDFury manufacturer over its ability to “strip” the latest HDCP encryption.

The Chinese hardware manufacturer refutes this claim and has pointed out that its tools merely allow users to convert HDCP encryption, which would be fair use and permitted by law.

While the case continues in court, a pirate group has stepped up to add some fuel to the fire. In an NFO file packaged with a recent release of the Netflix film “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday,” Scene group ‘Team QCF’ thanks HDFury while describing it as one of its sponsors.

“We like to give a shout out to our sponsors without them this is not possible :p,” the NFO file reads, linking to the controversial HDFury 4k splitter.

While the release in question is 1080p, the controversial hardware makes it possible to use a 4K source to get a better encode.

The nfo

In addition, Gatorade also gets a plug. “Drink Gatorade it will help your encodes,” the NFO file adds, linking to the Gatorade website.

Team QCF doesn’t normally list any sponsors, and it’s pretty unlikely that HDFury or Gatorade have intentionally contributed to the Scene group. However, the wink to HDFury suggests that the devices are indeed used to rip 4K content from Netflix.

At least, the group felt the urge to respond to the recent controversy over the HDFury devices.

It is doubtful that the “endorsement” will be featured in court though. As an anonymous source, Team QCF may just as well be putting up a smokescreen for fun, or perhaps to divert attention from another vulnerability.

That said, LegendSky is probably going to be unhappy with the fact that their HDFury devices are now openly being plugged by a well-known Scene group.

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

During the summer of 2014 LionsGate suffered a major setback when a high quality leak of the then unreleased Expendables 3 film appeared online.

Fearing a massive loss in revenue the movie studio sued the operators of several websites that allegedly failed to remove the infringing files.

Since most of the defendants failed to appear in court, LionsGate asked for a default judgment against the alleged operators of LimeTorrents and the defunct Dotsemper and Swankshare sites.

While the websites are not responsible for the original leak, they failed to respond to a slew of takedown requests sent by the movie studio in the days after the film first appeared online.

Last week United States District Judge Otis Wright granted the default judgment (pdf), ordering Muhammed Ashraf (LimeTorrents), Tom Messchendorp (Dotsemper), and Lucas Lim (Swankshare) to pay the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 each.

The maximum amount in statutory damages is appropriate, according to the Judge, because the movie studio likely suffered substantial losses as a result of the pre-release leak of The Expendables 3.

“In light of the fact that the film garnered over $575 million dollars in worldwide box office revenues, the ‘value of the copyright’ strongly favors a high award of statutory damages,” Judge Wright notes.

“Defendants hosted the anticipated film available online prior to its theatrical release for the purpose of enabling users to illegally download it, which more than likely diminished Plaintiff’s revenue substantially,” he adds.

Judge Otis Wright’s order

In addition, the maximum in damages may serve as a deterrent for the defendants and any other site operators that link to or host infringing content.

“Moreover, an award of the enhanced statutory damages will likely serve to deter Defendants and others from infringing Plaintiff’s rights in the future,” Judge Wright’s order reads.

The court also issued a permanent injunction on top of the damages, forbidding the men from operating their sites going forward, as well as any other websites through which The Expendables 3 is being made available.

Whether this injunction will be very effective is doubtful. TorrentFreak previously spoke with the LimeTorrents operator, who informed us that his site will remain online, no matter what the outcome is.

“We want to keep the site up and running, and we don’t care about default judgment because we don’t have any faith in the United States,” Ashraf told us.

The site operator, who also runs Torrentdownload.biz, said that the “Expendables 3” keyword was already banned from appearing in the search results, and that he doesn’t intent to pay any damages.

“We already took action and blocked their keyword, so we don’t have a penny to pay them for their own leak problem,” the operator said.

At the time of writing LimeTorrents and Torrentdownload indeed remain operational. LimeTorrent’s .com domain name was locked earlier, but the site is still accessible via a new .cc TLD.

Dotsemper and Swankshare previously shut down. The operators of these sites live outside of the United States and haven’t been responsive, so whether LionsGate will recoup much of the $450,000 is highly doubtful.

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.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens 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	(…)	Star Wars: The Force Awakens	8.3 / trailer
2	(1)	Deadpool (HDrip subbed)	8.6 / trailer
3	(…)	Ice Age: The Great Egg-Scapade (Web-DL)	6.1 / trailer
4	(6)	The Revenant (Web-DL)	8.2 / trailer
5	(3)	The 5th Wave (HDrip)	5.4 / trailer
6	(2)	Kung Fu Panda 3 (Web-DL)	8.0 / trailer
7	(4)	IP-Man 3	7.6 / trailer
8	(5)	The Hateful Eight	8.0 / trailer
9	(…)	Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Cam)	7.5 / trailer
10	(9)	Spectre	6.9 / trailer

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

Transmission is one of the oldest and most used BitTorrent clients. Since its first release in 2005, the free, multi-platform application has gathered a steady user-base of millions of users.

Transmission is one of the most-used Mac BitTorrent clients as well as being the default BitTorrent client on various Linux distributions.

However, despite being more than a decade old official support for the Windows operating system has always been lacking. This changed earlier this month, when the first Windows build was added to the download directory.

Users who try the Windows version will notice that it’s very similar to the releases on other platforms. All the features are in the same place, and the look and feel is pretty much identical as well.

TorrentFreak spoke with Transmission developer Mike Gelfand, who’s in charge of the Windows project. He tells us that a lot of progress has been made in recent months and that the official Windows release will be added to the download page after the next version comes out.

The big question is, however, why Windows and why now?

Mike explains that the idea came from a conversation he had with Transmission developer Jordan Lee, who noted that the lack of Windows support was the “biggest missing feature.”

“Since then I saw many people showing up either willing to use Transmission on Windows since they already use it on another platform, or looking for an alternative to their current BitTorrent client on Windows for this or that reason,” Mike notes.

Transmission for Windows

Since the original developers had little experience with Windows coding, Mike decided to take on Jordan’s proposal and join this part of the project.

On the one hand, the goal was to make Transmission’s “fast, easy and free” experience available to Windows users. Secondly, an official release simplifies life for people maintaining unofficial forks.

And so, after several months of active development, Transmission for Windows arrived. Thus far the release hasn’t been actively promoted, but it has been picked up by Ghacks and a few other places already.

Mike stresses that the project is still in active development and that more changes and features are likely to be introduced in the near future. Thus far, it is pretty much a copy of the core Transmission client without any additional features.

“The only difference right now is that it runs on Windows. We’ll see how it goes, some features could be added later on which are specific to Windows and aren’t needed on other platforms,” he says.

Those interested in giving Transmission for Windows a spin can download the client here.

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

Following the 2012 raid on Megaupload and Kim Dotcom, U.S. and New Zealand authorities seized millions of dollars in cash and other property.

Claiming the assets were obtained through copyright and money laundering crimes, the U.S. government launched a separate civil action in which it asked the court to forfeit the bank accounts, cars and other seized possessions of the Megaupload defendants.

The U.S. branded Dotcom and his colleagues as “fugitives” and won their case last summer. However, Megaupload’s legal team soon appealed the verdict and defended its position in the Fourth Circuit appeals court this week.

During the hearing Megaupload Appellate Counsel Michael Elkin pointed out that it was wrong to rely on the ‘fugitive disentitlement‘ doctrine, as Dotcom and his former colleagues were merely exercising their legal right to defend themselves.

Ira Rothken, Kim Dotcom’s Lead Global Counsel, informs TorrentFreak that the District Court’s decision denied defendants’ basic rights and violated due process.

“We asked the Fourth Circuit to rule in favor of fairness, natural justice, and due process by stopping US efforts to take Kim Dotcom’s global assets for doing nothing more than lawfully opposing extradition to the United States—a country he has never been to,” Rothken says.

Rothken believes that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) wrongfully labeled the Megaupload defendants as fugitives and hopes the appeals court will undo the verdict.

“The DOJ in our view is trying to abuse the Fugitive Disentitlement Doctrine by modifying it into an offensive weapon of asset forfeiture to punish those who fight extradition under lawful treaties, and a provocation for international discord.”

“Today we asked the Court of Appeals for justice,” Rothken adds.

Megaupload’s defense is not alone in this assessment having previously received support from a group of prominent legal experts.

The Cato Institute, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Institute for Justice previously submitted an independent brief in support of Megaupload, describing the assets grab as a dangerous violation of due process rights

“Stripping the claimants of their due process rights isn’t just unconstitutional, it’s dangerous. There’s a growing literature on the abuse of civil forfeiture and those abuses are directly tied to the protections given to the claimants here, as well as the ability of government officials to directly benefit from forfeitures,” they wrote.

The crux of the appeal is whether or not the District Court’s order to forfeit an estimated $67 million in assets was right. According to the Government it was, as the defendants’ due process rights were not violated.

During this week’s hearing Assistant U.S. attorney Jay Prabhu denied any wrongdoing. According to the Government, Kim Dotcom and his colleagues were properly labeled as fugitives. The U.S. feared that Dotcom would get his money back if no action was taken and filed the civil case “as a last resort“.

The case now lies in the hands of the Fourth Circuit appeals court. Their decision will be crucial for the criminal trial, but the Hong Kong and New Zealand courts also have to weigh in on the verdict, as many of the contested assets are located there.

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

In 2014 leaked documents from the Sony hack revealed that the MPAA helped Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood to revive SOPA-like censorship efforts in the United States.

In a retaliatory move Google sued the Attorney General, hoping to find out more about the secret plan. The company also demanded internal communication from the MPAA and its lawfirm Jenner & Block, as well as several movie studios.

More recently Google requested a deposition of MPAA lead counsel Steve Fabrizio, who could possibly provide additional details on the case. These type of interrogations are part of the discovery process, but the MPAA argued that this would violate its First Amendment rights.

According to the MPAA, its involvement with the Attorney General is protected by the First Amendment privilege, which protects associational activity.

However, in a response submitted to a federal court in Mississippi this week, Google strongly disagrees.

“The MPAA’s attempt to invoke the First Amendment privilege to hide its efforts to suborn a public official to attack Google is wholly disingenuous and misunderstands the nature of the privilege itself,” Google writes.

Google points out that there’s is no chilling effect on speech in this case, as the MPAA’s lobbying efforts and anti-piracy focus are already widely known. In addition, they point out that the First Amendment privilege is limited and not applicable in this case.

Instead, the search giant informs the court that the Hollywood group is merely trying to keep its lobbying efforts out of the public eye in order to avoid scrutiny or embarrassment.

“It is simply not enough for the MPAA to claim that its associational rights would be ‘chilled’ because the MPAA would prefer that its covert lobbying efforts remain secret so that it can avoid scrutiny or embarrassment,” Google writes.

“It must actually show consequences which objectively suggest an impact on, or ‘chilling’ of, the members’ associational rights,” they add.

Another crucial point raised by Google is that the First Amendment privilege doesn’t protect lobbying, something the MPAA’s anti-piracy efforts would certainly fall under.

Turning the tables, the search engine argues that it’s the MPAA who are helping the Attorney General to breach Google’s First Amendment rights.

“There is something deeply troubling in the MPAA claiming the First Amendment privilege to shield its role in lobbying Attorney General Hood to threaten Google’s First Amendment rights.

“The MPAA should not be permitted to spend years lobbying a public official to suppress the speech of a business rival and then turn around and hide behind the very rights it was trying to squelch,” Google adds.

Google therefore asks the court to deny the MPAA’s motion to quash and order Mr. Fabrizio to appear at a deposition so he can be heard.

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

Despite the growing availability of legal music services in many countries, record labels are facing a constant stream of pirated music.

In an attempt to prevent these infringements, BPI and other music industry groups send millions of takedown notices to Internet services every month. Most of these requests are directed at Google.

Later this week the UK music industry group BPI will reach a new milestone, notifying Google of the 200 millionth allegedly infringing URL. This is more than any other industry group.

At the time for writing BPI has reported 199,728,661 links which were spread out over 328,714 separate notices. This means that the music group is responsible for roughly 15% of all URLs that are submitted to Google.

BPI takedown requests

While the takedown requests help to limit the visibility of pirate sites in search results, the BPI is far from satisfied with the process. In particular, the group is frustrated by the fact that the same content often reappears under a different URL.

“…Illegal results that are taken down by Google are frequently replaced by other illegal links, which means that legal services continue to be overshadowed by infringing sites in the very top search results,” the BPI said today.

Ideally, the BPI would like a lower threshold for pirate sites to be down-ranked, while completely de-listing sites that have been ruled illegal by the High Court. In addition, they call for a “notice and stay down” procedure where search engines ensure that the same content doesn’t reappear under a new URL.

“This damaging situation can only be remedied by Google themselves changing strategy and proactively pursuing a ‘notice and stay down’ approach, so that once a piece of content has been notified for removal by the BPI, it isn’t indexed again for the same site and stays removed,” BPI notes.

The UK Government has put the issue on the agenda as well and is hosting a round table, where it hopes to reach a voluntary agreement between search engines and entertainment industry players.

Government involvement or not, thus far an agreement is still miles away. Google believes that the current takedown system is both effective and efficient enough to deal with infringing content

“[The takedown procedure] provides copyright owners with an effective and efficient framework for removing any infringing page on a site,” Google said previously, noting that it removes hundreds of millions of URLs per year.

The company has rejected the “notice and stay down” plans and believes that removing or blocking entire websites might chill free speech and prove counterproductive.

BPI Chief Executive Geoff Taylor disagrees and stresses that the current system is not an effective response to online piracy. Search engines should take a more active stance against piracy, voluntarily, or with little push from the Government.

“We are calling on Google and Bing to show their undiluted commitment to artists and the creative process by implementing a more pro-active solution to illegal sites appearing in search results,” he says.

“This will avoid the cost for both of us in dealing with hundreds of repeated notices for the same content on the same illegal sites,” Taylor adds.

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