Author: Ernesto

There are dozens of celebrity cats on the Internet, but Grumpy Cat tops them all.

The cat’s owners have made millions thanks to their pet’s unique facial expression. Part of this revenue comes from successful merchandise lines, including the Grumpy Cat “Grumppuccino” iced coffee beverage.

The coffee is sold by the California company Grenade Beverage, who also operate the domain name grumpycat.com. The company licensed the copyright and trademarks to sell the iced coffee, but are otherwise not affiliated with the cat and its owners.

Up until recently the partnership didn’t cause any problems, but that changed when Grenade announced a new line of Grumpy Cat merchandise. In addition to the iced coffee, they now sell Grumpy coffee beans as well.

This expansion violated the license agreement, according to Grumpy Cat’s owners, who just filed a lawsuit at a California federal court to set the record straight.

“Ironically, while the world-famous feline Grumpy Cat and her valuable brand are most often invoked in a tongue-and-cheek fashion, Defendants’ despicable misconduct here has actually given Grumpy Cat and her owners something to be grumpy about,” the complaint starts.

The cat’s owners explain that they hold the copyrights and trademarks associated with their pet, and argue that the new line of roasted coffee ground products requires separate approval under the license agreement.

Grumpy Cat’s copyrights

“In late 2015, Plaintiff learned of Defendants’ intent to create and exploit a line of ‘Grumpy Cat’ branded roasted coffee ground products, which would be separate and apart from the ‘Grumpy Cat Grumppuccino’ product line contemplated by the License Agreement,” the complaint reads.

Grumpy’s owners informed Grenada on several occasions that they did not agree to the new product line, but the beverage maker went ahead and launched the product anyway.

“Defendants were repeatedly told by Plaintiff (both in writing and verbally) that the Licensed Properties could not be used in connection with a roasted coffee ground product,” they write.

Pirate coffee?

The roasted beans are up for sale at grumpycat.com and are being widely advertised to tens of thousands of followers on various social media accounts. The cat’s owners are asking the court to stop these sales and hold Grenada responsible for various copyright and trademark infringements.

The potential statutory damages run into the hundreds of thousands and in addition Grumpy Cat’s owners also want to take over the grumpycat.com domain name, claiming that it was registered in bad faith. Previous requests to sign over the domain name all failed.

Whether Grumpy Cat will win this case depends on the exact language of the license agreement and how this will be interpreted by the court. However, Grenade Beverage should be warned, as cats have a tendency to win the Internet.

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

This week we have five newcomers in our chart.

Pan 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	(…)	Pan	6.0 / trailer
2	(…)	The Martian (Subbed HDRip)	8.2 / trailer
3	(…)	The Intern (Webrip)	7.4 / trailer
4	(1)	Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials	6.8 / trailer
5	(2)	Goosebumps (Webrip)	6.8 / trailer
6	(3)	Hate Story 3 (DVDscr)	5.0 / trailer
7	(…)	Crimson Peak (Web-DL)	6.9 / trailer
8	(…)	The Ridiculous 6 (Webrip)	5.2 / trailer
9	(5)	The Man from U.N.C.L.E.	7.5 / trailer
10	(9)	Inside Out	8.4 / trailer

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

When BitTorrent was first launched in 2002 it was a breakthrough technology.

At the time it was virtually impossible to share large files with millions of people over the Internet, something BitTorrent can do very effectively.

Today, the standard BitTorrent clients have lost most of their shine. While it’s still one of the best ways to transfer data from A to B, they became somewhat old-fashioned with the rise of video streaming sites and services.

But what if there was a technology that could combine the two? Smooth and instant streaming in the browser powered by BitTorrent’s core technology. That’s in short what WebTorrent does.

WebTorrent is a project launched by Feross Aboukhadijeh, a Stanford University graduate who has already booked quite a few successes in his career. After graduating he founded PeerCDN, a P2P-assisted content delivery network, which was sold to Yahoo at the end of 2013.

Feross then focused on WebTorrent, convinced that it could revolutionize how the web works today.

“I felt that the idea of ‘people-powered websites’ – websites that are hosted by the visitors who use them – was too revolutionary to keep locked up as proprietary software, and I wanted to do more to push the idea forward,” he tells TF.

“Imagine a video site like YouTube, where visitors help to host the site’s content. The more people that use a WebTorrent-powered website, the faster and more resilient it becomes.”

Simply put, WebTorrent is a BitTorrent client for the web. Instead of using standalone applications it allows people to share files directly from their browser, without having to configure or install anything.

WebTorrent

This opens up BitTorrent technology to virtually any website that deals with a lot of data, and expands the userbase by hundreds of millions of people who already have compatible browsers such as Chrome or Firefox installed.

“WebTorrent is the first torrent client built for the web. It’s written completely in JavaScript – the language of the web – and uses WebRTC for true peer-to-peer transport. No browser plugin, extension, or installation is required,” Feross tells TF.

Over the past two years WebTorrent has matured into a project that’s slowly starting to win over several major tech companies.

Netflix, for example, contacted Feross to discuss his technology which they may use to stream their videos. A few months ago Netflix specifically mentioned WebTorrent in a job application, which shows that the video giant is serious about P2P-assisted delivery.

Feross believes that companies such as Netflix could benefit greatly from WebTorrent. Currently, streaming performance goes down during peak hours but with WebTorrent this shouldn’t be a problem.

“If Netflix uses WebTorrent, customers would see higher video quality during peak hours. WebTorrent would allow customers with the same ISP to share video pieces with each other without leaving the ISP’s network,” Feross says.

“This ensures the best quality, even during peak Netflix usage hours when the network link between the ISP and Netflix is fully saturated,” he adds.

Netflix aside, there are already various noteworthy implementations of WebTorrent. The project’s homepage, for example, shows how easily it can stream video and βTorrent offers a fully functioning torrent client UI.

Other examples include File.pizza, which uses WebTorrent to share files in the browser. The same technology is used for server-less websites by PeerCloud and Webtorrentapp, while GitTorrent uses it to decentralize source control.

In addition to the examples above, the Internet Archive is also looking into the technology for its video distribution, and another major tech company is considering adding WebTorrent support to their web browser.

It’s not all roses though and there are still several challenges to overcome. Not all browsers support WebRTC yet, most notably, Internet Explorer. In addition, WebTorrent can’t talk to traditional torrent clients which use UDP and TCP instead of WebRTC.

BitTorrent – WebTorrent

There are several hybrid clients such as Playback, but ideally WebTorrent should be more tightly integrated into the standard BitTorrent protocol, which is something Feross is currently working on.

It’s clear that WebTorrent has a lot of potential and it will be interesting to see how it develops over the years to come. If it’s up to Feross, it will play a major role in the future of the web.

“I like to think of WebTorrent as core Internet infrastructure. It’s an efficient way to transfer files between users on a website, and I expect we’ll continue to see many more creative uses for the protocol,” he says.

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

This week Aurous developer Andrew Sampson settled his legal dispute with the RIAA. He now owes them $3 million.

While the outcome is a financial disaster for the student he doesn’t plan to crawl into a corner, quite the opposite in fact. His torrent search engine Strike was brought back online recently, serving torrents to the masses.

The Strike search engine launched earlier this year and provides users with a tool to find the latest torrents. The site itself doesn’t host any files but pulls data directly from BitTorrent’s DHT. The site’s users can then click on magnet links to download the associated files.

When Sampson was sued by the RIAA in October the Strike search engine was also taken offline. Many assumed that this was a legal precaution and that Strike was one of the infringing activities mentioned in the Aurous complaint.

According to the RIAA the search engine was “specifically designed to promote copyright infringement on the BitTorrent network, which is notorious as a source for pirated music, movies, games, and software.”

Sapmson disagrees.

While he has indeed signed a settlement agreement that prohibits him from operating any services that infringe on the copyrights of the major music labels, Strike is now back online.

According to the Florida-based developer the search engine operated within the boundaries of the law. People who visit the site won’t see any infringing content unless they specifically search for it.

“Strike’s search engine is powered by a blind spider, it can only see hashes, seeders and leechers. This is all the data it collects, from there when a user requests a hash using either our API or the main search interface, information on that hash is fetched and delivered,” Sampson tells TF.

“Strike doesn’t offer any actual torrent downloads nor does it direct you to a place to download it. We do offer magnets, but this is just for ease of use,” he adds.

Indeed, the search engine doesn’t link to external torrent sites. However, the magnet links have a similar function to torrents and provide enough information to download the files which are referenced in search results.

Strike Search Results

Still, Sampson maintains that Strike doesn’t encourage any infringement and that it’s mostly a meta data engine. He will continue the project and says that it’s his ultimate goal to create a set of tools that can power a Home theater PC.

The Strike API helps with that, with tools such as the remote task manager and the remote control functionality.

Technology aside, in copyright infringement cases the legality of a service often boils down to how it’s presented. A neutral torrent client can become blatantly infringing when it’s advertised as the ultimate pirate tool.

The RIAA previously pointed out how Sampson “boasted” about the infringing search results pirates could find with Strike, which is something that’s best to avoid to keep out of trouble.

What’s perhaps most striking about the whole situation is that the RIAA didn’t make Strike an integral part of the out-of-court settlement. This appears to be an oversight, or perhaps they are not bothered too much about the search engine.

TorrentFreak asked the RIAA about their current position on the Strike search engine, but the group did not wish to comment.

To be continued?

Source: TorrentFreak, 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.

Over the past year there has been little progress in the case as most of the accused site operators failed to respond to LionsGate’s complaint.

In a new filing at the California district court LionsGate indicates a desire to move forward by asking for a default judgment (pdf) against the operators of LimeTorrents and the defunct Dotsemper and Swankshare sites.

While the sites have nothing to do with the original leak, they allegedly failed to respond to a slew of takedown requests sent by the movie studio in the days after the film leaked.

According to the court papers LimeTorrents is operated by Javed Ashraf, who like the other two operators is not based in the United States.

“Prior to filing this lawsuit Lions Gate sent multiple demand letters to Defendant Ashraf demanding that he immediately cease his infringement but received no response, and the infringement did not stop,” the studio writes.

This inaction contributed to the millions of pirated downloads that occurred before the film officially premiered, LionsGate argues, accusing the defendants of causing “substantial and irreparable damage.”

The movie studio is now asking the court to issue a default judgment preventing the site operators from offering or linking to pirated copies of The Expendables 3.

In addition, LionsGate demands the maximum $150,000 statutory damages for willful copyright infringement from each of them, as well as compensation for attorney fees and additional costs.

Previously LionsGate settled with the operator of video hosting service Played.to. Without the other defendants showing up in court, it is also expected to win this case easily.

Whether the accused site operators will actually cough up the money is another matter.

At the time of writing both Swankshare and Dotsemper are offline, and have been for a while. LimeTorrents and TorrentDownload.biz remain operational though.

In fact, while LimeTorrents blocked the “Expendables 3″ term from its search results, there are still hundreds of individual torrent download pages available that link to the film.

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

A few days ago the Pirate Bay’s original .org domain name was suspended by its registrar EuroDNS due to an administrative issue.

Instead of being greeted by the iconic pirate ship logo, users saw a warning message indicating that the domain registrant had failed to verify their WHOIS details.

This verification process is a requirement of domain oversight body ICANN.

While the .org was no longer the primary domain name of The Pirate Bay many people still actively used it, so the suspension was widely noticed.

However, the troubles didn’t last long and were resolved a few hours ago. At the time of writing thepiratebay.org is fully accessible, allowing people to browse the site without being redirected.

Whether the registrant, which is listed as Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij, verified the domain details is unclear. The domain was moved to a new registrar this week, which may have been used to circumvent the verification process.

ThePiratebay.org Whois

The .org domain was transferred to the Canada-based company EasyDNS, which has a track record for defending the rights of its customers.

For example, EasyDNS previously objected to domain suspension requests from City of London Police. The company took the matter to ICANN which ruled that registrars are not required to suspend a domain name without a valid court order.

For now it’s smooth sailing again for the notorious torrent site. Whether it’s through the .org domain, or one of several other official domains it uses.

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

The newly elected Canadian Government has yet to announce how it will tackle online piracy going forward. However, a new Government document highlights some interesting points.

In a briefing Canadian Heritage officials prepared for minister Mélanie Joly several copyright related topics are discussed. The recent changes proposed by the TPP, for example.

The briefing also identifies three emerging copyright issues and pressures that may need to be addressed during the years to come, as Canadian law professor Michael Geist reveals.

On the top of this list of potential problems is “copyright infringement using VPNs.” While VPNs have plenty legitimate purposes, especially for those concerned about their privacy, pirates also use them to prevent being tracked by monitoring companies.

While the use of VPNs for infringing activities is a concern, Professor Geist believes that targeting these services won’t go down well with privacy advocates.

“Those [infringing] activities raise genuine issues, though the prospect of targeting the technology itself would quickly generate robust opposition from those who rely on VPNs for a myriad of legitimate purposes,” Geist notes.

Slide from the Minister’s briefing

VPNs could also play a major role in a second point being raised, which mentions the hybrid legal and illegal offer of online content. Although it’s not further specified, this may refer to the unauthorized access of streaming services such as Netflix in other countries.

Many Canadians use VPN services to access the U.S. version of Netflix, which has a more appealing content library. This topic was highlighted by Bell Media’s boss earlier this year, who accused her daughter of being a Netflix “thief.”

According to Professor Geist the Government wouldn’t have a very strong case to go after this circumvention behavior, as it will be hard to prove actual losses.

Finally, the brief mentions pirate site blockades by ISPs, something that’s become fairly popular in recent years, especially in Europe. The first signs of Canadian blocking efforts surfaced earlier this year with Quebec’s plans to ban illegal gambling sites.

Whether the three “issues” will become part of new copyright law is unclear. If so, this would be another shift in the wrong direction according to Professor Geist.

“Canadian copyright was already on track for a boisterous debate in the coming years,” he writes.

“If government officials envision adding VPN usage, access to U.S. Netflix, and website blocking to the list of issues, copyright could emerge as one of the government’s most difficult and controversial issues.”

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

Last October saw the much hyped public release of Aurous, a music player that tapped into a library of pirated music.

The major record labels were not happy with the emergence of the “Popcorn Time for Music” and wasted no time trying to take it down.

Just days after Aurous’ alpha launch, Florida-based developer Andrew Sampson and his company were targeted by the major music labels. The RIAA accused the owners of copyright infringement and demanded millions in damages.

Initially Aurous seemed determined to put up a fight. The court shut down the application through a preliminary injunction but Sampson was convinced that his application was not breaking any laws.

After several scathing replies from the RIAA, who went into full attack mode, things went quiet. Behind the scenes both parties agreed that it was best to settle their dispute which they officially announced a few minutes ago.

In a filing submitted at a Florida federal court both parties agree that Aurous did indeed violate the copyrights of the major labels. They agree to settle the dispute for $3 million, which is described as a reasonable damages award.

The consent judgement

The filing (pdf) also includes a permanent injunction preventing Sampson and Aurous co-founder Danielle Astvatsaturova from committing any infringing actions in the future.

In addition, Aurous agreed to sign over its domain name and all intellectual property to the music labels.

The consent judgment is only part of the full settlement. The RIAA and Aurous signed a separate agreement outside of court. It is not uncommon for the true settlement amount to be much lower than the figure stated in court, as we’ve previously seen in an MPAA case.

Commenting on the announcement, RIAA Chairman & CEO Cary Sherman says the RIAA is happy with the settlement.

“Aurous appropriately agreed to shut down. It was the right thing to do. We hope this sends a strong signal that unlicensed services cannot expect to build unlawful businesses on the backs of music creators,” Sherman says.

Aurous’ creator, meanwhile, accepts his losses but is not done developing just yet. Sampson informs TF that he has moved on to a new project which will see the light of day in the near future.

“It’s still music related, but more centered around live performances. I will be showcasing it soon,” he says.

Taking the past few eventful weeks into account, we assume that his new creation is lawsuit proof. In any case, the RIAA is bound to watch his every step.

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

Netflix subscribers across Europe all have access to a different library of films and videos.

The same is true for users of many other streaming services such as BBC iPlayer, Amazon Instant Video and HBO Go.

This means that paying customers are often unable to use their accounts, or with restrictions, when traveling to other European countries.

These geo-blocking practices have been a thorn in the side of the European Commission who today published a concrete proposal requiring streaming services to ban them.

The proposal, which is the first in EU’s broader copyright reform, requires online services to remove geo-blocking in Europe. This means that Netflix users can access their local content library in any EU member state.

This also includes countries where the service isn’t currently operating. For example, a Swedish HBO subscriber should be able to access his account in Italy, where it’s not available legally.

“We want to ensure the portability of content across borders. People who legally buy content – films, books, football matches, TV series – must be able to carry it with them anywhere they go in Europe,” says Andrus Ansip, Vice-President for the Digital Single Market.

Netflix previously called for an end to all geo-blocking and says it’s happy to provide users with great content wherever they are.

“We’re committed to providing Netflix members with great programming wherever they are and are studying the EU’s proposal,” a Netflix spokesperson informs TF.

While the plans are a positive development for users, copyright holders may be more skeptical. They will have to rewrite their licensing agreements to allow online access to content across borders.

According to the EU Commission many people already try to bypass geo-restrictions through VPN services. Under the new proposal, this is no longer needed.

Ironically, the changes may not always be beneficial. In some cases people use a VPN to access a broader library of films and video in another EU country, which will no longer be possible under the new rules.

In addition, Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda points out that the proposal only fixes part of the problem. People who are in countries where Netflix and other services aren’t available, will remain without access.

The plans proposed today still requires official approval from the European Parliament but the commission hopes that it will be implemented in 2017.

More concrete copyright reform proposals are expected to follow next year. This includes updated anti-piracy measures based on the “follow the money” approach as well as various exceptions to allow broader use of copyrighted material.

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

Many Internet traffic reports have been published over the years, documenting how traffic patterns change over time.

A decade ago, long before the BitTorrent boom began, studies indicated that BitTorrent was responsible for an impressive 35% of all Internet traffic.

In the years that followed Internet traffic distribution underwent a metamorphosis, as video streaming took off with the launch of YouTube and later Netflix. As a result BitTorrent lost a significant share of total Internet traffic, in the United States at least.

However, BitTorrent is still here today and arguably more popular than ever before.

A new report published by broadband management company Sandvine reveals that torrent traffic is now responsible for 29% of all U.S. Internet traffic in North America during peak hours, up from 25% last year.

This means that well over a quarter all megabytes uploaded during the busiest time of the day can be traced back to torrents.

Traffic share in North America during peak hours

The increase is noteworthy as BitTorrent’s traffic share has consistently dropped in recent years, as other data sources grew more quickly. This drop is still visible in the overall peak hour traffic, where BitTorrent went from 5% to 4.4%.

This downward trend doesn’t mean that BitTorrent users share less data, as overall bandwidth usage has increased as well. However, Netflix, YouTube and several other entertainment services have certainly grown stronger.

Looking at the downstream traffic, we see that BitTorrent’s share during peak hours dropped to ‘only’ 2.7%. For the first time, both Amazon and iTunes are now using more data than BitTorrent and Hulu is closing in as well.

While BitTorrent has many legitimate uses most data is transferred by pirated files. This means that Netflix and the others are direct competitors for the popular file-sharing protocol.

Looking at the larger picture it’s clear that BitTorrent remains extremely popular in North America, but competition from legal services is growing.

It will be interesting to see how this trend develops during the years to come. It will certainly take a while before any other data source overtakes BitTorrent in terms of upstream traffic.

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