Author: Ernesto

Nowadays pretty much every self-respecting coffee bar has its own Wi-Fi access point, allowing customers to check their email or read the latest news.

The same is true for many other shops and establishments that offer free and open Internet access.

While most free Wi-Fi users do little harm, these unsecured networks can also be used to download and share copyrighted material. This is what happened to Tobias McFadden, who runs a local music and lighting shop in Munich, Germany.

In 2010, a music pirate on McFadden’s network was flagged by Sony, who took the owner of the shop to court. While the local German court was inclined to hold the shop operator responsible for indirect copyright infringement, EU Advocate General Szpunar disagrees.

In a lengthy advisory opinion to the EU Court of Justice, which will issue a final ruling later, Szpunar concludes that much like general ISPs, operators of commercial establishments with free Wi-Fi are not liable for pirating users.

This means that the safe harbor Internet providers enjoy also apply to members of the public who offer free Wi-Fi as part of their business.

“In his view, it is not necessary for the person in question to present himself to the public as a service provider or that he should expressly promote his activity to potential customers,” the EU Court of Justice clarifies in a press release today.

The Advocate General does leave room for local courts to impose injunctions on network operators to stop the copyright infringements. However, these should be fair and balanced, without any requirements to monitor users.

Also, the operators of free Wi-Fi should not be forced to secure their connections. This requirement would prioritize the interests of copyright holders above the public’s right to freedom of expression and information, which would not be appropriate.

“By restricting access to lawful communications, the measure would also entail a restriction on freedom of expression and information,” the Court notes.

“More generally, any general obligation to make access to a Wi-Fi network secure, as a means of protecting copyright on the Internet, could be a disadvantage for society as a whole and one that could outweigh the potential benefits for rightsholders.”

The Advocate General’s advice is not binding, but the European Court of Justice often uses such advice as the basis of its rulings.

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

When the MPAA shut down the main PopcornTime.io fork late last year, many of its developers switched to the project’s ‘legal’ spin-off Butter.

Unlike Popcorn-Time, Butter doesn’t include any links to pirated movies and TV-shows. Instead, it acts as a general purpose streaming tool and actively promotes content that’s freely published by indie filmmakers.

Despite this neutral setup, a recent series of takedown requests Hollywood’s MPAA sent to GitHub threatens to pull the project’s code offline.

Correspondence seen by TorrentFreak shows that the MPAA has been asking GitHub to remove the repository of the recently revived PopcornTime.sh, as well as all related forks.

“There are multiple ‘forks’ of Popcorn Time, all of which are 100% unlicensed and infringing, and many of which have been subject to litigation and court orders around the world confirming their infringement,” the MPAA informs GitHub.

“Popcorntime.sh is one of the more recent infringing ‘forks,’ and we attached several specific examples of that site’s infringement to our prior letter. The Project provides to any member of the public the software needed to develop and release additional infringing Popcorn Time forks, and thereby enables infringement on a massive scale.”

Interestingly the notices don’t mention any Butter related projects by name. But since the PopcornTime.sh fork uses code from Butter, Github has also involved several ‘legal’ spin-offs.

In their notices the MPAA lists several files that are “most clearly and unambiguously designed” to deliver or find infringing content, including package.json and torrent_collection.js which are sourced from Butter. Several of the other files that are mentioned have nothing to do with Butter.

MPAA’s takedown request

A few hours ago the notices were forwarded to several Butter related projects, including a fork operated by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, giving the operators 24 hours to respond before their entire codebase is pulled.

Leo Germani, a representative of the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, informed us that they have already responded to GitHub.

“We answered GitHub clarifying that our project is a fork of the Butter project, not Popcorn Time, which we believe is totally unrelated to Popcorn Time and does not have any code that infringes copyright,” Germani says.

“We have been discussing and researching the use of P2P protocols for content distribution and we were excited when we got in touch with the Butter project, which aims to use the power of P2P to distribute licensed audiovisual content,” he adds.

Brazilian technology company Hacklab informed TorrentFreak that one of their repositories was targeted as well.

“Butter is a great technology that can reduce the cost of distributing videos and has the potential to boost the development of our local film industry. As a digital technology company we have to keep up with the most promising technology trends, and Butter is one of these,” Hacklab’s Luis Fagundes says.

“This notification is insane, as it’s directed to a different project and cites a bunch of files that do no violation at all. Unfortunately, the cost of this irresponsibility is high: it causes harm to developers and businesses who, instead of producing value to society, have to respond to a takedown threat,” he adds.

Talking to TorrentFreak, another developer explained that the MPAA’s description of the files is not totally accurate. The package.json file, for example, is not infringing and merely serves as the main entry point for the application.

The torrent_collection.js file, which isn’t enabled by default, allows users to add random torrent files to Butter but doesn’t link to any specific infringing material. The developers hope that their response will be sufficient to keep the project online.

Strangely enough, the people behind the PopcornTime.sh fork itself have not yet been contacted by GitHub and their repository remains online at the time of writing.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that GitHub is treating the issue very carefully. The MPAA has sent several requests over the past several weeks and Github has repeatedly requested further clarification and additional details.

However, despite GitHub’s vigilance the MPAA isn’t giving up, urging the developer platform to go above an beyond the DMCA to help combat potential copyright infirngements.

“We hope you agree that GitHub’s responsibility to not knowingly assist in a massive copyright infringement operation does not end with its DMCA policy,” the MPAA told the platform.

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

Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has targeted the operators of pirate sites for more than a decade, but more recently it started going after uploaders as well.

Over the past several months the group has tracked down several prolific uploaders and has now announced intentions to take these efforts a step further.

Today the national data protection authority granted BREIN permission to collect the IP-addresses of pirating BitTorrent users, allowing the group to approach uploaders on a broader scale.

According to BREIN Director Tim Kuik they are ready to monitor and crack down on larger groups of file-sharers.

“The trial run is behind us and we will now start collecting IP addresses and evidence. I advise notorious uploaders to think twice, after all, forewarned is forearmed,” Kuik says.

The enforcement efforts will not be limited to pirates who share thousands of titles. BREIN says that people who are found sharing recent titles on a frequent basis are at risk too.

Also, BREIN notes that its enforcement actions are not limited to a specific content category. Those who share films, TV-series, music, books and games are all at risk, Kuik warns.

The magnitude of the proposed settlements will differ based on individual circumstances, but could go as high as 12,500 euros. Those who choose not to settle can look forward a full-blown court case instead.

“Uploading a recent film or an episode of a TV-series you can basically already cost a few thousand euros,” Kuik says. “If there is no settlement, we will go to court to claim full damages and costs.”

Before BREIN can reach out to any alleged pirates they will have to request the personal details from the Internet providers in question.

Several ISPs have already announced that they will not hand anything over without a court order, so this issue will have to be ironed out in court before BREIN can proceed.

Also, there’s a large group of file-sharers who hide behind VPN services, many of which can’t identify their customers through an IP-address. BREIN is aware of this but notes that it’s not always impossible to identify VPN users.

Those VPN users who do get caught using a less secure service can look forward to a higher settlement demand than regular users.

“VPN services can see what you do, you run a security risk and it is possible that you can still be identified, which will result in a higher ‘fine’,” Kuik says.

According to BREIN, VPN users should consider paying for legal content, instead of paying for anonymous access to illegal content, so that creators get properly compensated.

It’s clear that the anti-piracy group is toughening its language. For many years the Netherlands was considered a safe haven for file-sharers, but if left up to BREIN this will no longer be the case.

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.

Kung Fu Panda 3 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	(2)	Deadpool (HDTS)	8.6 / trailer
2	(1)	Kung Fu Panda 3 (Webrip)	8.0 / trailer
3	(…)	IP-Man 3	7.6 / trailer
4	(3)	The Hateful Eight	8.0 / trailer
5	(5)	The Revenant (DVDscr)	8.2 / trailer
6	(…)	The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2	6.8 / trailer
7	(…)	Point Break	5.3 / trailer
8	(4)	The Big Short	8.1 / trailer
9	(8)	Spectre	7.9 / trailer
10	(…)	Room	8.3 / trailer

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

Hollywood-backed anti-piracy group BREIN and Usenet provider News-Service.com have been battling in court for several years already.

BREIN is looking for a ruling that makes keyword filters mandatory on Usenet, but the now defunct Usenet provider argues that this is not feasible.

A final decision in the case was delayed again this week. Before it reaches a conclusion, the Dutch court wants both sides to answer detailed questions about the efficacy and costs associated with such a filtering mechanism.

Both parties are allowed to present their own experts to testify on the matter. This could prove to be very interesting, as the Usenet provider is already receiving support from an unexpected quarter.

IP-Arrow, a copyright enforcement company that works with rightsholders such as Lionsgate, has just published an opinion article arguing against keyword filters.

The company admits that their stance may not be a popular opinion in the industry, but as one of the outfits that specializes in Usenet, they strongly believe that keyword filters are costly and ineffective.

To understand the situation people have to understand the difference between the Usenet servers and the sites that act as indexers. On the indexing sites people search for NZB files that link to movies and music. However, the actual file-names on the Usenet servers are often quite cryptic.

While these filters may work on Usenet indexing sites, the files on the Usenet servers are often named differently and are therefore harder to filter. Instead of “JoesMovie.avi,” the file would be named “klj37jkhf812jkj11klh66690-132.avi” for example, or any other non-descriptive name.

“When we look at an indexing site for filtering, it makes sense because a user is actually looking or seeing “JoesMovie” in a list,” IP-Arrow’s Joe explains. “They are not looking for “klj37jkhf812jkj11klh66690-132” nor do they care what the actual filename is.

“They grab an NZB or torrent file and start downloading,” he adds.

As a result, using automated filters to remove content from Usenet servers is much harder than it looks. According to IP-Arrow these type of filters will therefore fail to deliver.

In theory it might be possible to arrive at a more effective solution, but that would certainly not be automated. Instead, it would require a rather expensive operation comprising of people who continuously scour Usenet for pirated content.

“This would require a massive database that would need to be updated hourly by live people for all the variations of titles. To do any filter on this scale would by an extremely expensive project on a level that we have not seen,” Joe notes.

As one of the most prominent Usenet takedown service providers, IP-Arrow of course has a stake in taking this position. That said, the company does have quite a bit of Usenet expertise on board.

The article cited above is written by Joe Morganelli, who himself operated the Usenet indexer Binnews several years ago.

Morganelli and his site were eventually targeted by the MPAA in 2006. A year later he agreed to a consent judgment which included several million dollars in damages, after he ‘switched sides’ and started a content protection outfit.

If News-Service.com continues their case against BREIN it looks like they might have found an excellent expert witness to argue their case…

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

Traditionally the movie industry has relied on geographical licensing deals through which movie and TV-show rights are sold to separate parties in various countries.

As a relative newcomer to the business, Netflix’s vision is to do things differently. The company’s aim is to make as much content available globally as it can and is developing several movies and TV-shows in-house to advance this mission.

With this in mind, one would think that geographical copyright restrictions are no longer an issue for Netflix’s own original programming, but unfortunately this is not the case.

Last week Netflix released the latest season of House of Cards, something millions of people were looking forward to. However, Netflix subscribers in dozens of countries are not able to watch it, yet, due to licensing issues.

House of Cards fans in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Hong Kong, Turkey and most of Africa are among those missing out. They can watch the first seasons, but there’s no sign of the new episodes. Even worse, in some countries House of Cards isn’t available at all.

Needless to say, the missing House of Cards episodes are being met with a mixture of surprise and anger online.

Missing cards

TorrentFreak reached out to Netflix for an explanation and we were informed that the company doesn’t have global licences for its drama series House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black. The latter series is entirely absent from Netflix in over 50 countries.

“Most of our originals content will be available globally. However, with these two earlier shows, we didn’t negotiate global licenses to the content and so they’ve aired on other platforms in the meantime,” the company states.

“We may get them back in some of our new markets. For example, we have Orange is the New Black available in our new countries in Asia, with the title coming to the Middle East and Africa later this year,” Netflix adds.

This situation is quite painful since Netflix has repeatedly called on the movie industry to offer its content globally, without artificial barriers. Apparently, they haven’t managed to do this for all of their own content yet.

According to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings the licensing issues are a legacy from the last seven or eight years, which they hope to get rid of in the near future.

“We’re moving as quickly as we can to have global availability of all the content on Netflix so that there are not regional distinctions. We’re still somewhat a prisoner of the current distribution architecture, we’re trying really hard to get there,” he said.

In the meantime, House of Card fans who live in the wrong country must hold their breath, although many are already looking for alternative means to get what they want…

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

Late last year 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 possible provide additional details on the case. These type of interrogations are part of the discovery process, but according to the MPAA Google’s recent request goes too far.

The MPAA believes that the deposition should be quashed, as it would put its anti-piracy strategies at risk and violate its First Amendment rights.

In a motion to refuse the deposition, the MPAA notes that their lead counsel only sent two emails to the Attorney General. The group therefore suspects that Google has an alternative motive to hear its counsel.

More specifically, the MPAA fears that Google may use the discovery process to uncover its legal anti-piracy strategies.

“…the conclusion is inescapable that Google seeks his deposition not to advance any legitimate discovery goal, but rather to satisfy Google’s curiosity about, and potentially undermine, the MPAA’s anti-piracy legal strategies..,” they write.

MPAA’s opposition

In recent months Google has already requested numerous documents and deposed several people who are or were connected to the group, with a particular interest in its anti-piracy efforts.

“Google has shown a keen interest in learning more about the MPAA’s content protection activities, and is using discovery in this case to that end,” the MPAA’s filing reads.

“Even before its latest salvo, Google had served six subpoenas on the MPAA, its law firm, three of its member companies, and two of its employees or former employees.”

In addition to breaching its anti-piracy strategies, the MPAA doesn’t want to reveal any details on their strategy to ask government law enforcement officials for help in copyright infringement cases.

Having to reveal these internal strategies would violate their First Amendment right to free exercise of political speech and association, the MPAA argues.

“…inquiry by Google into the MPAA’s decisions to petition government law enforcement officials for assistance regarding Google’s conduct threatens to chill the First Amendment associational rights of the MPAA, its employees (including Mr. Fabrizio), and its members,” they write.

It’s now up to the judge to decide whether Google should be allowed to interrogate the MPAA’s lead counsel. Deposition or not, based on the stakes at hand this case isn’t going to blow over anytime soon.

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

While the largest file-sharing sites are targeted at an international audience, there are also many localized versions tailored to users in smaller regions.

This is also the case for the file hosting services Lolabits.es, Abelhas.pt and Partageurs.com.

The three sites, which are linked, target users in Spanish, Portuguese and French respectively and have grown to become very popular in countries where these are the native languages.

However, this will soon end. After several years of operation the file-sharing portals have announced they will close their doors at the and of the month.

In a message to its users, Lolabits says that the closure is due to reasons beyond their control. The other two sites have put up a similar message, urging users to back up their files before the and of the month.

“We regret that LOLABITS.es closes on March 31, 2016 for reasons beyond our control. Download your important files this month, because from that date they will no longer be available,” Lolabits notes.

TorrentFreak reached out to the Lolabits operator who informed us that there are no legal issues. Instead, the sites have problems monetizing their service, suggesting that it’s no longer sustainable to keep them online.

Lolabits will close

Most copyright holders will be happy to see the sites gone, as they were common targets for various takedown requests.

Google’s transparency report shows that rightsholders asked to remove over a million links pointing to the sites, with Abelhas being flagged the most, more than 800,000 times in recent months.

Interestingly, the original Polish version of the file-hosting services shows no shutdown notification and lives on for now. Chomikuj.pl has been in operation for over a decade and is currently among the top 30 most-visited sites in the country.

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

The Pirate Bay has become unreachable for more than a day now.

TorrentFreak reached out to the TPB team and we were informed that there’s a technical issue with the servers that should be resolved soon.

The Pirate Bay currently displays a CloudFlare error message across all domain names, confirming that TPB’s servers are unresponsive.

In addition to the main thepiratebay.se domain name, the .onion address and various proxy sites are also offline.

The Pirate Bay has had quite a few stints of downtime in recent weeks. The popular torrent site usually returns after several hours, but an outage of more than 24 hours relatively rare.

With the raid of 2014 still fresh in memory some are quick to spread panic, but these concerns are unwarranted.

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

In 2009, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN, representing the movie and music industries, took News-Service Europe (NSE) – one of Europe’s largest Usenet providers – to court.

BREIN stated that NSE should delete all infringing content from its servers, and in 2011 the Court of Amsterdam sided with the copyright holders.

In its initial verdict the Court concluded that NSE willingly facilitated copyright infringement through its services. As a result the company was ordered to remove all copyrighted content and filter future posts for possible copyright infringements.

Responding to the verdict the Usenet provider said that it was economically unfeasible to filter all messages. The company therefore saw no other option than to shut down its services while the appeal was pending.

In 2014 the appeals court issued an interlocutory judgment ruling that NSE does not facilitate copyright infringement as long as it maintains a procedure through which copyright holders can send unlimited takedown notices.

Whether the Usenet provider could also be ordered to employ a keyword filter was something to be decided at a later date. This week the Court issued its second judgment, but while both parties had hoped for more clarity, the Court pushed a final decision back once more.

Instead, the Court is now questioning whether both parties are still willing to take the case forward, as NSE already ceased its services several years ago. If they continue, both parties will have to split the legal costs as the case will have no clear winner.

In addition, the Court is asking both parties to provide expert witnesses who can answer several outstanding questions regarding a keyword filtering mechanism.

Among other things the Court would like to know if a keyword filter is technically feasible (NSE says it is not) and what costs and resources would have to be invested to employ such measures.

The Usenet provider is disappointed with another delay, but former CFO Wierd Bonthuis is happy that the court didn’t rule against the company.

“I am pleased that the Court of Appeal has finalised its conclusion that News-Service Europe did not act unlawfully,” Bonthuis says.

“However, it is painful that we must now conclude that this means it has been established that in 2011 BREIN wrongfully forced News-Service Europe to cease its activities.”

For its part, BREIN stresses that the Court made it clear that Usenet services must maintain a proper takedown procedure, and possible more.

“Even if a Usenet provider is seen as a neutral intermediary, they still need to have an effective takedown procedure and take appropriate additional measures to curb the massive infringements,” says BREIN director Tim Kuik.

According to BREIN, services that “thrive on illegality” prefer not to take any effective measures against copyright infringement as that would hurt their business.

Neither party has commented on the future of the case, but considering the lengthy legal history it’s likely that they would both want to take it all the way.

While the Usenet provider doesn’t plan to relaunch its services in the future, a final decision on keyword filtering could have broad implications for similar services in the Netherlands and abroad.

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