Author: Ernesto

Lawsuits against alleged file-sharers are a common occurrence in United States federal courts.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been accused in recent years, most after using standard BitTorrent clients.

More recently there’s been a specific focus on Popcorn Time users, who were targeted in a series of lawsuits this summer.

One of the cases was filed by the makers of The Cobbler, who listed the IP-addresses of several Popcorn Time users in their complaint. The goal of the filmmakers is to identify the account holders and settle the dispute out of court, which some have already done.

However, not all of the accused are cooperating.

In a new filing submitted this week (pdf) the movie studio explains that while they have already settled with five Popcorn Time users, four Comcast subscribers failed to respond to their inquiries.

“Four of the subscribers have refused to respond to plaintiff’s letters and plaintiff is without means to obtain voluntary cooperation with its investigation to identify whom may have used their Internet Service to infringe plaintiff’s rights,” the studio writes.

Instead of naming the account holders as defendants, the filmmakers say they would rather depose the subscribers first to ask face-to-face if they can pinpoint the true Popcorn Time pirates.

“While the named subscriber is often the proper defendant, plaintiff wishes to ensure that investigations are complete and proper and submits that in this matter something beyond the mere identification of a subscriber by an ISP is proper before a defendant is named,” the company explains.

Through a testimony under oath the movie studio hopes to identify the real culprits so they can be named in the lawsuit. The depositions can take place at a location the account holders’ lawyers determine and should take no longer than two hours.

The movie studio’s request was granted a day after it was submitted, which means that the depositions will now go ahead.

In the accompanying subpoena (pdf) the subscribers are ordered to identify all persons who had access to the Comcast connections in question. In addition, they must bring along copies of any copyright infringement notices they’ve received.

While the movie studio states that the depositions should help to track down the offenders, more critical observers may note that they’re also an optimal tool to pressure ISP subscribers who choose to ignore settlement requests and other threats.

Depositions in these type of file-sharing cases are relatively new and not all courts are eager to grant them. A few weeks ago a Washington District Court rejected a similar request noting that it may be used as a threat just to get subscribers to settle.

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

The main Popcorn Time fork operating from the PopcornTime.io domain name shut down its servers late October citing internal problems.

A few days later the MPAA took credit for the fall, announcing that it had filed a lawsuit against several of the developers in Canada. In response some developers backed out.

Faced with an abrupt ending several Popcorn Time users were keen to revive the defunct application. The effort has been a success, with a fully working fix now circulating on Reddit.

The fixed version uses new APIs so movies and TV-shows now show up again. Instead of using YTS as a movie provider the revived application uses TorrentsAPI, and the TV-show feed has been replaced by a custom API.

The Reddit fix is only the start. Users of VPN.ht, the VPN service associated with Popcorn Time, were also alerted about a new update to the movie streaming application recently.

“VPN.ht Movies API FIX installed,” the message read, prompting users to restart the application.

It turns out that the VPN provider made several changes which allows users to access the Popcorn Time website and client without any issues.

Popcorn Time alert

After the fix is applied Popcorn Time becomes fully operational again, filled with the latest movies as if nothing has happened.

For now the general public can’t use their old Popcorn Time client without manually applying a fix, but this may change in the near future.

Popcorn Time developer Wally, who also founded the VPN.ht service, informs TorrentFreak that he could revive Popcorn Time to its full glory.

“I am still considering a full comeback, I just do not want to release a half working version,” Wally says.

The developer, who controls both the official Twitter account and mailing list, first wants to make sure that all domain names are out of the MPAA’s reach. This is a concern, as the Canadian lawsuit is still ongoing.

Wally is not listed as a defendant in the Canadian lawsuit but his name was mentioned in the complaint. In addition, the VPN.ht company was mentioned in both the claim and injunction.

Instead of fighting Popcorn Time, Wally believes the MPAA should embrace its concept and technology.

“The popularity of Popcorn Time should be an example for the MPAA to a build a future streaming platform that will be open to the entire world,” Wally says.

Lawsuits or not, it’s clear that the technology is hard to stop. Even now that the original sources no longer work, people can still use the application as a basic torrent streaming client, manually loading torrents into it.

The MPAA is not going to be pleased with the plans to relaunch the popular Popcorn Time fork. However, neutral spectators may want to get the popcorn out, as this saga is far from over.

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

Last summer the MPAA sued several popular movie streaming websites which all operated under the MovieTube flag.

In their complaint the movie studios listed MovieTube.cc, TuneVideo.net, Watch33.tv, MovieTube.cz, Anime1.tv, MovieTube.pm, FunTube.co, MovieTube.la, KissDrama.net and several related sites.

The websites in question were typical streaming services, where users could watch videos and in some cases download source files to their computers. Since they used the same hosting facilities and design elements the studios believed that they were operated by the same people.

Several months have passed since the action was filed and the operators of the MovieTube sites have yet to appear in court. They were quick to pull the accused sites offline after the compliant was filed, but never responded to any of the claims.

Due to this inaction, the MPAA now requests a default judgment. In an affidavit submitted to a New York federal court before the weekend they point out that MovieTube made a healthy profit from its operations.

“Defendants’ aggressive promotion and search-engine optimization of the MovieTube Websites permitted them to profit off their blatantly infringing activities,” the MPAA’s attorney writes (pdf).

According to the MPAA the MovieTube sites attracted over 81 million estimated visits per month, including more than 60 million visits from the United States.

“Defendants’ advertising-based revenue model would have yielded them significant profits given their high traffic, little to no overhead, and the fact that, unlike legitimate digital content services, they paid not a single dollar to license the content on their websites.”

In a proposed default judgment (pdf) the MPAA requests a permanent injunction that would prohibit the accused from offering or linking to any copyright infringing material. In addition, the movie studios want the domain names to be transferred to them.

In addition, the MPAA requests statutory damages for willful copyright infringement in the amount of $75,000 per title, for a total of $10.5 million.

The proposed injunction no longer requires search engines, ISPs and hosting companies to stop linking or offering services to MovieTube. This request was dropped earlier after Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Yahoo branded it as a broad censorship attempt.

Without any opposition from the defendants the MPAA is destined to win this case. However, whether they will ever see any damages is highly doubtful. For now the true operators of the MovieTube sites remain unknown.

That said, the Hollywood group has already scored a victory by shutting down the MovieTube ring when the lawsuit was filed.

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

Trackers are a crucial part of the BitTorrent infrastructure, making it easier for downloaders and uploaders to connect to each other.

Technically speaking trackers are similar to a DNS provider, they function as a ‘phone book’ pointing people to content without knowing what it is.

Over the past several months Demonii became the largest torrent tracker online, handling requests from more than 50 million peers, resulting in more than two billion connections per day.

However, since this weekend Demonii is no more.

The tracker simply vanished without an official explanation from the operator. Since it’s connected to the now defunct YTS/YIFY group, it’s safe to assume that the tracker is not coming back.

In addition to the suspicions, a well-informed source has also confirmed that this is the end for the tracker.

Started in 2013 Demonii was a relatively young tracker that soon became the largest of its kind. After OpenBitTorrent and PublicBT suffered prolonged downtime earlier this year it was the only top tracker left standing.

Demonii’s demise shows that the MPAA’s legal action against YTS/YIFY will have an even larger impact on the BitTorrent ecosystem than expected.

Demonii’s growth over the past year

After a settlement the YTS.to domain name is now controlled by the MPAA, but as far as we can see the Demonii.com domain hasn’t yet fallen into the hands of the Hollywood group.

Although one of the largest trackers has folded, most torrents will still work fine thanks to DHT, PEX, and some other large trackers that remain online. That said, in some cases it may take longer to connect to peers.

With Demonii, YTS and YIFY gone there’s no doubt that the torrent ecosystem has lost one of its biggest players. However, this is not the first time that a large BitTorrent tracker has folded and historically others have stood up to take the strain.

OpenBitTorrent and PublicBT have been up and running again for a while, and other sizable trackers such as Coppersurfer.tk and Leechers-Paradise remain available as well.

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

This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

Ant Man is the most downloaded movie for the second week in a row.

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	(1)	Ant-Man (Webrip)	7.7 / trailer
2	(…)	Another World/a> (Web-DL)	5.3 / trailer
3	(…)	Ronaldo/a>	6.7 / trailer
4	(2)	The Man from U.N.C.L.E.	7.5 / trailer
5	(7)	No Escape	6.9 / trailer
6	(3)	Inside Out	8.4 / trailer
7	(5)	Everest (Subbed HDRip)	7.3 / trailer
8	(…)	American Ultra (Web-DL)	6.1 / trailer
9	(4)	Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (Subbed HDrip)	6.8 / trailer
10	(…)	Unthinkable	7.3 / trailer

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

Last year BMG Rights Management and Round Hill Music sued Cox Communications, arguing that the ISP fails to terminate accounts that are frequently used to pirate content.

The case is crucial as it may define the obligations of Internet providers hoping to keep their safe harbor protections. Ideally, the music companies would like to have the accounts of repeat infringers terminated.

Both sides are currently preparing for trial and Cox recently submitted a motion to the court, where it asks for a ban on statements and evidence which equate BitTorrent to piracy.

Earlier this week we reported on Cox’s argument that the direct piracy evidence gathered by the music companies can’t be trusted, and now the ISP also wants to cut off alternative arguments.

“Plaintiffs seek to introduce testimony and third-party hearsay — with inflammatory statements such as ‘File-Sharing Is Really About Piracy’ — as proof that BitTorrent use equates to the existence of infringement,” Cox writes (pdf).

“Once they have argued that BitTorrent use is automatically infringing, Plaintiffs seek to introduce other testimony and documents showing that some proportion of data traffic on Cox’s network is associated with BitTorrent in order to mislead the jury into thinking that Cox knew or should have known about the infringement that Plaintiffs allege.”

Instead of generalizing BitTorrent traffic as copyright infringement, the music companies should offer direct proof that Cox subscribers pirated their work. Any other allegations are inappropriate and misleading according to Cox.

“Plaintiffs are free to try to prove that specific BitTorrent users on Cox’s network actually infringed Plaintiffs’ copyrights, but the Court should preclude Plaintiffs from relying on mere innuendo that BitTorrent inherently allows individuals to infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrights.”

The Internet provider further stresses that there are plenty legitimate uses for the popular file-sharing protocol. It’s not just a technology that’s exclusidely used by pirates.

“Cox disputes Plaintiffs’ characterization of BitTorrent — it is demonstrably not true that there are no legitimate uses for BitTorrent,” the ISP writes.

“Plaintiffs have no evidence that most or all use of BitTorrent, which is simply a communication protocol, constitutes infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrights.”

In conclusion, Cox asks the court to prohibit BMG Rights Management and Round Hill Music from testifying or arguing that BitTorrent is primarily used for copyright infringement, so that it can’t mislead the jury during trial.

For their part, the music companies submitted a similar request related to Cox’s use of the terms “troll” or “extortionist.” In addition, they don’t want the ISP to argue that their tracking company Rightscorp violated debt collection or private investigation licensing laws.

It’s now up to the court to decide which arguments will be permitted during trial and what will be off-limits.

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

When Megaupload was raided early 2012 the U.S. Government seized 1,103 servers at Carpathia’s hosting facility in the United States.

Nearly four years have since passed and it’s still uncertain what will happen to the servers, which are safely stored in a Virginia warehouse at the moment.

After a renewed request for guidance on the issue, District Court Judge O’Grady started to explore what options are on the table. He asked the various parties what would be required to release the servers and whether their possible return has any complications.

In a response, hosting company QTS/Carpathia says that most data will still be intact but that retrieving it will be a costly endeavor.

The equipment that was used to link the servers together is no longer on the market. Used parts are still available but this would cost roughly $500,000. In addition, hundreds of thousands of dollars are needed to move the servers and set them up properly.

United States Attorney Dana Boente notes that a successful data return would likely cost millions. However, the Government has no interest in the servers and doesn’t want any of Megaupload’s restrained funds to be released to pay for the costs.

According to the Government some of Megaupload’s money comes from illicit proceeds. In addition, the possible return of the servers is a concern because they contain child pornography.

“The United States further reminds the Court that the Federal Bureau of Investigation found that many of these servers contain, as indicated more particularly under seal, copies of known images of child pornography,” Boente writes (pdf).

The MPAA also responded to questions posed by the court. The Hollywood group says it’s still gravely concerned that the copyrighted movies and TV-shows may fall into the hands of others.

“The MPAA members remain gravely concerned about the potential release of the copyrighted works that are stored on the […] servers at issue here,” the movie industry group writes (pdf).

Transferring the data to Megaupload or another party would be copyright infringement in and by itself, they argue.

“The release of these digital files would not only risk the further infringing distribution of the MPAA members’ highly valuable copyrighted works, but any transfer of these files by QTS to Megaupload or a third party would itself be an infringement of the MPAA members’ copyrights in those works.”

Based on the reasoning above it’s nearly impossible to move any of the data without violating the rights of the movie studios.

However, former Megaupload user Kyle Goodwin, represented by the EFF, stresses that there’s no need to restore the entire infrastructure. He only wants access to the personal files he lost during the raid.

Finally, Megaupload’s defense argues that it can’t pay for the servers as long as their assets are restrained.

Dotcom’s defunct file-hosting service suggests placing the servers “under a litigation hold” at a reputable eDiscovery vendor such as KPMG, to ensure the confidentiality of the files. Recovering the data won’t come cheap though.

“Megaupload had previously received an e-vendor’s estimate of US$7.7 million for forensic duplication of the data needed for e-discovery and evidence purposes,” they write (pdf).

It’s now up to District Court Judge Liam O’Grady to make a recommendation regarding the possible return of Megaupload’s servers. Based on the input from the parties above this may prove to be a difficult task.

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

Late last month one of the biggest piracy icons ended its operation.

Faced with a multi-million dollar lawsuit from Hollywood the operator of YTS and the YIFY release group decided to throw in the towel.

However, that doesn’t mean that these famous have disappeared for good. Several unrelated sites are trying to take over YIFY’s dedicated followers, with YTS.ag being the most successful thus far.

The site, which is connected to the people who hijacked EZTV earlier this year, want the public to believe that they are the real YTS. They misleadingly use the name of a member of the real YTS team, for example, and suggest that YTS simply decided to move to a new domain.

This strategy appears to have worked since hundreds of thousands of visitors have viewed the site already. And after the ‘fake’ YTS decided to encode their own rips, many believe that it’s business as usual.

Hoping to push the traffic numbers up even further, YTS.ag also contacted several of the most popular torrent sites, asking if they can release their torrents there as well.

In their email the operators make it clear that they have nothing to do with the original YTS/YIFY team. However, they say they would like to pick up where the original group left off.

“Do we have acknowledgement from previous YIFY team to do this? The answer is that we could not reach them,” the email reads.

“We do our best to continue their work, thus so far we have uploaded our own encodes/releases with very similar quality/size of previous YTS team and even improving a bit the audio part of the encodes. We have our own seedboxes and upload very fast the releases.”

The YTS.ag team offers the torrent sites a “partnership” and hopes it will be able to add their releases to these sites, using the popular YTS brand.

“You have a very strong community and your users are searching daily for new YTS releases. Even though they can find them at yts.ag we would like to partnership with you and add our new releases to your website,” they write.

TF spoke with several torrent site operators who say they will not allow YTS.ag to publish on their websites with a YTS or YIFY inspired tag, stating that it would be inappropriate.

RARBG isn’t allowing any YTS.ag rips on their site and ExtraTorrent is banning YTS and YIFY impostors as well.

“They are cheap groups who want to benefit and make a quick name by jumping on something that was already there,” the ET team tells us, adding that the same thing happened when aXXo disappeared several years ago.

“They will fade away, even though many downloaders will fall prey to the scam,” they add.

KickassTorrents is another site taking a similar stance. The KAT team says it will only accept releases if YTS.ag uses an unrelated name.

“Here at KAT we don’t think it’s a good idea for a release group to use the name of the other group confusing our users. So no platform will be provided at least until they choose another name,” the team informs us.

KAT moderator Mr. Black understands that other groups want to trade on the popular YIFY/YTS name but adds that in addition to the possible confusion, KAT would never allow it out of respect for the original group.

“This is something that is always going to happen but we also understand that the quality of these groups will never be the same. To allow this would be insulting to the original release group who we trusted in the past and gained so much respect with us,” he says.

“Over the past weeks we thanked YIFY for his input to our site over the years. His reply was that the appreciation from ourselves made them pleased and he thanked us for having trust in them.”

That being said, KAT can’t ban regular users from uploading the releases.

None of the torrent sites we spoke with will allow YTS.ag to take over from the old group but the releases are presently appearing on some automated search engines including isoHunt.

While the operators and moderators at the major torrent sites are quite loyal, many users don’t seem to care. They are happy as long as they can get their weekly dose of pirated movies.

At the time of writing thousands of people are sharing the YTS.ag releases as if nothing ever happened.

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

Early last year The Court of The Hague handed down its decision in a long running case which had previously forced two Dutch ISPs, Ziggo and XS4ALL, to block The Pirate Bay.

The Court ruled against local anti-piracy outfit BREIN, concluding that the blockade was ineffective and restricted the ISPs’ entrepreneurial freedoms.

The Pirate Bay was unblocked by all local ISPs after the decision while local anti-piracy organization BREIN took the matter to the Supreme Court.

Today, the Court decided to postpone its final decision. Following a recommendation from the Advocate General it decided to stay the proceedings and refer two key questions to the EU Court of Justice, seeking clarification.

The first question that requires a European review is whether The Pirate Bay is actually communicating illegal content to the public.

More specifically, whether the operator of a website is communicating copyrighted works to the public if the site doesn’t host any content, but merely links to and categorizes meta-information so users can download the linked files.

If this question is answered negatively then the EU Court should clarify whether ISPs can be ordered to block a site if the operator facilitates copyright infringement in this way.

A decision at the European level will be important, as it may also affect court orders in other countries, such as the UK, Italy and Belgium where The Pirate Bay and other torrent sites are blocked as well.

After the questions are resolved at the EU Court the Dutch Supreme Court will make its final decision.

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

Compared to many other countries around the world, pirating movies and TV-shows is hugely popular in the Netherlands.

Up to a third of the population is estimated to download and stream copyrighted content without paying for it.

This high percentage is not surprising as the Netherlands has traditionally been a relative safe haven for pirates. Downloading movies without permission was not punishable by law until last year when the European Court of Justice spoke out against the tolerant stance.

In response the Dutch Government quickly outlawed unauthorized downloading but breaking the habits of a large section of the population will take more than that and local piracy rates remain high.

According to the Dutch Association of Professional Film Entrepreneurs (VPSO) and several independent distributors, the local Government is not doing enough to enforce the ban on unauthorized file-sharing.

As a result the filmmakers today announced plans to sue the Dutch state over its weak enforcement. The VPSO estimates that the local movie industry is losing hundreds of millions of euros per year, in part due to the Government’s lax stance on the issue.

The group argues that the Government should follow Germany’s lead when it comes to anti-piracy enforcement. German authorities frequently prosecute pirate site operators, which is one of the reasons why VOD and DVD sales are rising again, the filmmakers state.

In addition, this year Dutch film companies have increasingly hinted that they’re prepared to take civil action against online pirates.

A few weeks ago the distribution company Dutch Filmworks registered the local Popcorn Time trademarks for possible future enforcement actions and the company also said it is considering going after individual file-sharers.

Earlier this year Dutch filmmakers’ association SEKAM submitted a claim for piracy damages to the Ministry of Security and Justice, but this was denied.

The timing of the announced lawsuit doesn’t appear to be a coincidence. This coming Friday the Ministry of Security and Justice will organize a consultation on how to tackle illegal downloading, and today’s news will certainly heat up the debate.

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