Author: Ernesto

This week we have six newcomers in our chart.

The Intern 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	(3)	The Intern (Webrip)	7.4 / trailer
2	(…)	The Peanuts Movie (DVDscr)	7.7 / trailer
3	(1)	Pan	6.0 / trailer
4	(2)	The Martian (Subbed HDRip)	8.2 / trailer
5	(…)	The Revenant (DVDscr)	?.? / trailer
6	(4)	Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials	6.8 / trailer
7	(…)	The Lobster (Web-DL)	7.5 / trailer
8	(…)	Sicario	8.0 / trailer
9	(…)	Creed (DVDscr)	8.5 / trailer
10	(…)	The Hateful Eight (DVDscr)	9.1 / trailer

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

Without proper moderation any torrent site will turn into a swamp of fake files and malicious content.

This became painfully apparent earlier this year when The Pirate Bay was left unmoderated, and a similar situation is now taking place at 1337x.to.

The site, which is one of the most visited torrent sites on the Internet, has built up a strong community in recent years. As with most other sites the day-to-day operations are managed by admins and moderators, who volunteer their free time to dealing with spam and other inappropriate content.

After a redesign, however, the staffers have grown impatient with the site’s owner who failed to respond to various complaints. One of the most pressing issues is a security hole which allows others to hijack user accounts.

“The new design is full of bugs, leaving users unprotected and vulnerable to attacks. The owner has refused to fix those problems creating dissension in the ranks,” former 1337x moderator ‘The Ghost’ informs TF.

The vulnerabilities allow outsiders to take over the accounts of regular users and post all sorts of spam.

“What would happen, is somebody would reply to a comment that had a script injected. Once they replied, their account got hijacked and started uploading infected torrents,” The Ghost says.

The above is just one example, according to the moderator. These and other bugs caused a lot of problems for the moderation crew as well as the users. However, they reportedly remain in place today.

Since the owner has been very unresponsive, all active moderators and admins have decided to step down. They were already paying for the server rent and the 1337x domain names, which will likely be forwarded to the new home.

Visitors who access the old forum URL (1337x.net) are now redirected to the new home at leetxtorrents.org, where a new forum was created with a copy of the database.

Another “former” 1337x staffer Mustangx, who owns the original .com and .org domains, confirms the staff exodus and says that they are working on a new torrent site as well. The staffers don’t have access to the old code, so they have to start anew.

“We have a team working on an entirely new site at the moment. We hope to have it ready for the new year,” Mustangx says.

In recent days the owner of the original 1337x reappeared again. However, many staffers believe that it’s too late to make things right, although it hurts to leave their old home behind.

“Nobody likes the idea of just leaving the old site sitting there but it doesn’t have an off button. Kind of like leaving a claymore mine lying around the internet,” The Ghost concludes.

At the time of writing the old 1337.to site remains operational, but the domain may be redirected in the future as well.

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

Founder & CEO of Jumpwire Media Gavin McGarry, and publisher of The Illusion Of More and consultant to the Copyright Alliance David Newhoff agree to disagree on geoblocking, ISPs’ liability for pirating subscribers, the use of search engines to regulate piracy – and the biggest problems facing digital creators today.

Steal This Show host Jamie King, meanwhile, suggests that President Trump might want to round up pirates, and floats the idea of a Bad Search engine returning the search results no one else wants.

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STS aims to release bi-weekly episodes featuring insiders discussing copyright and file-sharing news. It complements our regular reporting by adding more room for opinion, commentary and analysis.

The guests for our news discussions will vary and we’ll aim to introduce voices from different backgrounds and persuasions. In addition to news, STS will also produce features interviewing some of the big innovators and minds, one-on-one.

Host: Jamie King

Guests: David Newhoff and Gavin McGarry.

Produced by Jamie King
Edited & Mixed by Eric Bouthiller
Original Music by David Triana

Topics being discussed this week:

– EU Proposal Bans Netflix-Style Geo Blocking and Restrictions
– Cox Is Liable for Pirating Subscribers, Ordered to pay $25 million
– Search Engines Need Regulating to Reduce Piracy, Russia Says
– And more…

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

Former Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter Sunde has always been very outspoken about people’s inherent drive to copy things.

Last year he paid the ultimate price of sacrificing his freedom for his involvement in TPB, but that hasn’t changed his core ‘kopimi‘ values.

One of Peter’s major frustrations is how the entertainment industries handles the idea of copying. When calculating the losses piracy costs, they often put too much value on pirated copies.

This is something Peter knows all too well, as he still owes various movie and music companies millions in damages.

However, this hasn’t stopped him from continuing to copy. In fact, he’s just built the ultimate copying machine using a Raspberry Pi, an LCD display and some Python code.

With these three ingredients the “Kopimashin” makes 100 copies of the Gnarls Barkely track “Crazy” every second. This translates to more than eight million copies per day and roughly $10 million in ‘losses.’

Crazy indeed.

Peter’s machine is part of an art project about the value of digital copies which he’s preparing for an upcoming exhibition.

“I want to show the absurdity on the process of putting a value to a copy. The machine is made to be very blunt and open about the fact that it’s not a danger to any industry at all,” Sunde tells TF.

“But following their rhetoric and mindset it will bankrupt them. I want to show with a physical example – that also is really beautiful in it’s own way – that putting a price to a copy is futile.”

The Kopimashin

The Kopimashin does make real copies of the track, but they are sent to /dev/null, which means that they are not permanently stored.

The most important message, however, is that the millions of dollars in losses the industry claims from him and the other TPB founders are just as fictitious as the number displayed on the Kopimashin.

“The damages in the TPB case are equally ludicrous of course. The idea behind it is of course never to get that money paid, but to scare people into silence and obedience.”

The millions of dollars the industry is said to lose stands in no relation to actual damages according to Peter. On the contrary, he believes that piracy positively affects sales.

“To quote Kenneth Goldsmith, I think the file-sharing trials of this century are going to be our obscenity trials. The claims are never valid, they’re never based on actual damage. If that was the case, we would have been awarded money.”

“The economics work differently in a global networked society. But the industries will not change. That’s why we need to take them down,” he adds.

The Pirate Bay co-founder hopes to finalize 13 Kopimashins for various exhibitions and plans to sell a few as well. In the meantime, he’s continuing to ‘bankrupt’ poor Gnarls Barkley and his label.

“The one running at my home is up to 120 million copies as we speak. That equals $150 million in losses to the recording industry – following their logic,” Peter says.

To get his copying effort recognized Peter contacted the Guinness Book of Records this week, who are currently reviewing his application.

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

In its annual “Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets” the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has listed more than a dozen websites said to be involved in online piracy.

The list draws heavily on input from industry groups and copyright holders including the RIAA and MPAA, who submitted their recommendations a few weeks ago.

While the USTR admits that its overview is not meant to be proof of any actual violations, it encourages responsible authorities to take legal action where it’s appropriate.

“The United States encourages all responsible authorities to intensify efforts to combat piracy and counterfeiting, and to use the information contained in the Notorious Markets List to pursue legal actions where appropriate,” they write.

As in previous years several of the top torrent sites are targeted, including ExtraTorrent, Torrentz and Rutracker. KickassTorrents (KAT) is listed as well, with the authorities noting that the site’s operators go to extremes to hide their identities and evade law enforcement.

“Reportedly based in Canada, over the past several years the site operators have changed the domain name numerous times, obscured or hidden their locations, and have used multiple servers in various countries to evade or otherwise frustrate enforcement actions,” USTR writes.

Interestingly, the latest USTR overview no longer lists The Pirate Bay, which was prominently and persistently featured in recent years.

In addition to torrent sites the list of notorious sites includes various streaming portals and cyberlockers such as 4Shared.com, Putlocker.is, Cuevana.tv, Watchseries.it, and Nowvideo.sx.

Russia’s main social network VK.com is mentioned as well, despite the company’s increased anti-piracy measures.

Continuing a trend that was started last year, the USTR also calls out a domain registrar as a rogue actor. According to the Government the Canadian registrar Rebel is servicing a disproportionate number of infringing sites.

“This year’s submissions reflect that, while the role of domain name registrars remains an ongoing subject of important discussion, Rebel’s outlier status is evidence that it is not taking measures that other domain name registrars have found to be reasonable to address infringement,” the report reads.

Several digital rights groups have pointed out that domain registrars are neutral services and shouldn’t be branded as piracy havens. However, according to the USTR companies such as Rebel should implement policies that allow it to act against clearly criminal activity.

In addition to domain registries, the USTR notes that some hosting services have also become piracy havens. The report specifically calls out the Swiss company Private layer which hosts Putlocker.is, Cuevana.tv, Watchseries.it, and Nowvideo.sx.

“This group of websites, all hosted by Private Layer based in Switzerland and Panama, are evidence of the rising popularity among pirate sites of certain Swiss hosting services,” the USTR writes.

Switzerland is currently working on new legislation to address a loophole in its law that makes it hard to take action against pirate sites, but this plan has yet to be implemented.

According to the Government the yearly overview has helped to spotlight several sites and services that were shut down over the past year. This includes the site of the popular release group YTS/YIFY and well as a leading Popcorn Time fork.

Whether similar successes will be booked during the year to come has yet to be seen. The full list of the notorious online sites and services that are highlighted in the report (pdf) are included below.

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-Rutracker.org (torrent site)
-ExtraTorrent.cc (torrent site)
-Kat.cr (torrent site)
-Ebooktree.org (linking site)
-Ex.ua (download/streaming)
-4Shared.com (cyberlocker)
-Rapidgator.org (cyberlocker)
-Uploaded.net (cyberlocker)
-Movshare group (which allegedly operates Nowvideo.sx, Watchseries.it, Torrenz.eu, Videoweed.es and Novamov.com)
-Private Layer (hosting company of Putlocker.is, Cuevana.tv, Watchseries.it, and Nowvideo.sx )
-Rebel (domain registrar)
-Segundamano.es (mod-chips)
-Bukalapak.com (e-commerce)
-Dhgate.com (e-commerce)
-VK.com (social network)
-Zippyshare.com (cyberlocker)

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

Today marks the end of a crucial case that will define how U.S. Internet providers deal with online piracy in the future.

Following a two-week trial a Virginia federal jury reached a verdict earlier today, ruling that Cox is guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement.

The case was initiated by BMG Rights Management, which held the ISP responsible for tens of thousands of copyright infringements that were committed by its subscribers.

During the trial hearings BMG revealed that the tracking company Rightscorp downloaded more than 150,000 copies of their copyrighted works directly from Cox subscribers.

It also became apparent that Cox had received numerous copyright infringement warnings from Rightscorp which it willingly decided not to act on.

The case was restricted to 1,397 copyrighted works and a six-person jury awarded #25 million in damages. The award is lower than the statutory maximum, which would have been over $200 million.

A week before the trial started Judge O’Grady issued an order declaring that Cox was not entitled to DMCA safe-harbor protections, as the company failed to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

BMG also argued that the ISP willingly profited from pirating subscribers, but the jury found that there was not enough evidence to back this up.

The verdict is bound to cause grave concern among various other U.S. Internet providers. At the moment it’s rare for ISPs to disconnect pirating users and this case is likely to change that position.

—

Breaking news, more information will follow.

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

Last year German police carried out raids looking for the operators of Kinox.to, the country’s most used movie streaming portal.

The police actions were part of a large investigation into the local piracy scene which includes a variety of streaming portals and file-sharing services.

As one of the largest European piracy streaming sites and one of the 50 most visited websites in Germany, Kinox.to was the biggest fish. However, despite the massive police response the two main operators are still on the run today while the site remains online.

The authorities did apprehend a third Kinox.to operator, the now 29-year-old Arvit O (aka “Pedro”) who handled things from the technical side. The Kazakh born admin has been detained since last October and this week he was sentenced to 40 months in prison for his involvement in the site.

The trial against Pedro was originally scheduled to continue until the end of January but the prosecution and defense reached an agreement to end the matter early.

The former operator of kinox.to, who made a partial confession, was found guilty by the District Court of Leipzig for infringing the copyrights of 2,889 works. In addition, the court found that he “hacked” computers of two competitors in order to improve Kinox’s market share.

In addition to the prison sentence Pedro must pay 20,420 euros due to the profits he made. During the hearing the former operator informed the court that he was not interested in Kinox for the money, but for the technical challenge.

The public defenders who represented Pedro were very critical about the involvement of the German Federation Against Copyright Theft (GVU), who assisted the authorities in their investigative work.

The attorney’s described GVU as a “Trojan Horse” in the justice system, claiming that they influenced the prosecution.

The anti-piracy group is not phased by the accusation. GVU chief Matthias Leonardy applauds the authorities for the success and says that his organization is committed to helping with similar efforts in the future.

“The successful completion of this criminal process shows once again that […] sound investigative work against copyright cybercriminals is amply rewarded,” Leonardy says.

“The investigating authorities have once again done excellent work here, and they are supported by the GVU and other rightsholders wherever possible,” he adds.

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

Last month the MPAA took credit for shutting down the main Popcorn Time fork, which operated from the PopcornTime.io domain name.

The Hollywood group had filed a lawsuit against several of the developers in Canada which caused other key developers to back out.

While the MPAA’s actions had a profound impact, it didn’t stop others from continuing with their own Popcorn Time spin-offs. The popular Popcorn-time.se fork was unharmed and most recently a new group of developers launched a Popcorn Time Community Edition (PTCE).

The people behind PTCE began their work with a fully operational fix for the .io fork which was circulated on Reddit. Later they also added their own fork and a dedicated website at Popcorntime.ml.

“Popcorn Time will probably never go away, despite the efforts made by organizations such as BREIN, the MPAA and others. Instead of fighting this great software they should embrace it,” the PTCE team told TF at the time.

The new fork was welcomed by many estranged Popcorn Time users and quickly gained a healthy userbase. However, two days ago the project’s official website and GitHub repository went dark.

At first it was unclear what had happened but an insider informs TF that several people involved with the PTCE project are “getting bugged” by the MPAA.

“The people behind the official CE sites have been contacted by MPAA for some time now,” says Luretrix2k, who’s a moderator at the Popcorn Time subreddit.

“They decided to take everything down and start all over again with a new strategy/game plan for the official site and GitHub repository to avoid this problem in the future,” he adds.

The PTCE team doesn’t want anyone to get in trouble with the law and are figuring out what steps they can take to avoid this. They hope to get the site back up again in the future and will continue to work on the application behind the scenes.

The MPAA pressure shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering the lawsuit against the developers of the popular .io fork. Also, two PTCE developers had to quit the project last month after they were targeted by Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN.

Even if the Community Edition doesn’t come back, others may jump in to take its place. Rinse and repeat.

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

Last week the trial between Internet provider Cox Communications and BMG Rights Management began, a case that may prove crucial for determining how ISPs deal with piracy in the future.

The music group holds Cox responsible for not doing anything about subscribers who frequently pirate content, claiming millions in lost revenue.

During the trial hearings both sides presented their case and according to BMG the ISP has provided insufficient evidence to reasonably support its defense.

A few hours ago the music publisher submitted a new motion to the court. Instead of leaving it up to the jury, BMG asks the court to rule that Cox is responsible for the mass copyright infringements on its network.

“Cox has failed to controvert the evidence presented by BMG concerning the staggering amount of infringements of BMG’s copyrighted works committed by Cox’s subscribers,” the motion (pdf) begins.

“BMG has shown that Rightscorp detected approximately 1.847 million instances of infringement, where Cox subscribers offered BMG’s copyrighted works for download via the BitTorrent protocol,” it adds.

During the trial hearings BMG revealed that the tracking company Rightscorp downloaded more than 150,000 copies of their copyrighted works directly from Cox subscribers. Because Rightscorp doesn’t capture everything, the true figure is expected to be even higher.

In its defense, Cox pointed out that Rightscorp failed to preserve all copies of its tracking code. As a result, the company argued that the claimed copyright infringements can’t be fully trusted.

BMG disagreed with what it described as “unsupported assertions,” and stated that their own expert found that Rightscorp’s system accurately detects the copyright infringements which are central to the case.

According to BMG it’s “undisputed” that Cox subscribers pirated their works and that the ISP knew about it. Cox received numerous copyright infringement warnings and willingly decided not to act on them.

“The evidence is undisputed that Cox knew that the infringement notices that it blocked provided Cox with notice of infringement of BMG’s copyrights,” the publisher writes.

In addition, the music company argues that the ISP contributed to the infringements by promoting “downloading and sharing music” in its advertising campaigns.

“Cox not only knowingly provides the means by which the infringement of BMG’s copyrights occurs, the evidence is undisputed that Cox promotes its high-speed internet services for the purpose of downloading and sharing music,” they write.

“Because Cox’s network constitutes the sites and facilities by which the infringement of BMG’s occurs through BitTorrent and P2P, Cox has materially contributed to the infringement of BMG’s copyrights as a matter of law. No reasonable jury could find otherwise.”

If the court agrees with BMG then there’s not much left for the jury to decide. One of the outstanding issues would be the amount of damages they award to the music publisher.

According to a proposed jury instruction there are 1,397 copyrighted works as part of this suit, each with a maximum of $150,000 in damages. This brings the total maximum damages to a mind-boggling $209,550,000.

Cox hasn’t had an easy defense during the trial. A week before it started Judge O’Grady issued an order declaring that Cox is not entitled to DMCA safe-harbor protections, as the company failed to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

With millions at stake, as well as the future of ISPs’ copyright infringement policies, the trial outcome will be closely watched by both the telecoms industry and copyright holders.

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

Last May, Grooveshark shut down after settling with the RIAA. However, within days a “clone” was launched aiming to take its place.

The RIAA feared the worst and took the matter to court, where it swiftly obtained an injunction, preventing various Internet service providers from offering their services to the site.

Through the lawsuit the record labels hoped to stop the site from gaining a large user base, something that previously happened to clones of other shuttered sites such as isoHunt.

This strategy paid off. Initially the Grooveshark ‘clone’ remained online for a few weeks, hopping from domain name to domain name, but it eventually vanished from the Internet.

The operator of the site went silent as well. Initially he widely promoted the clone in various media, but in court there was no response at all. This prompted the RIAA to file for a default judgment which has now been granted by U.S. District Court Judge Alison Nathan.

“Defendants have engaged in willful copyright infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrights through the Counterfeit Service, which allows users to download and stream infringing copies of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted sound recordings directly from servers operated or controlled by Defendants, in violation of Plaintiffs’ copyrights,” the judgement reads.

Grooveshark clone

Aside from a permanent injunction preventing the owner of the site from keeping it online, RIAA has also win millions in damages.

In the original complaint the record labels listed 89 tracks as evidence. The court awarded the maximum statutory damages ($150,000) for each infringement (pdf) which brings the total to a massive $13,350,000.

In addition, the operator of the site is ordered to pay $4 million for willful counterfeiting of two Grooveshark marks and another $400,000 for cybersquatting, by registering four Grooveshark domain names in bad faith.

The court further ordered the transfer of the Grooveshark domain names to the RIAA, so they can’t be used for any infringing actions in the future.

Finally, District Court Judge Alison Nathan stressed that CloudFlare still has an obligation to disconnect any new Grooveshark clones if they are notified by the record labels.

The mention of CloudFlare is noteworthy, as it’s the first time that the company has been specifically mentioned in a permanent injunction against a pirate site. Initially the RIAA wanted Cloudflare to detect any new Grooveshark clones, but the CDN company successfully fought that request.

The RIAA has yet to comment on the outcome of the case. On paper the $17 million judgment is a massive success, but since the site’s operator has yet to be identified it is doubtful that they will ever see a penny.

That said, the main goal was probably to stop the site from operating and deter others from starting their own clones. This mission is accomplished, for now.

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