Author: Ernesto

A few hours ago the MPAA took credit for shutting down one of the biggest piracy icons in recent history.

The YIFY release group and the YTS website shut down facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit, which the New Zealand-based operator couldn’t fight.

The downfall is a loss to many YIFY fans. However, the BitTorrent ecosystem at large will also be severely affected as it also signals the end for Demonii, the largest standalone BitTorrent tracker.

What only a few people know is that in recent years Demonii was run by YIFY’s operator. As a result of the legal troubles with the movie studios, Demonii will soon go offline as well, bringing down another key player.

With over 40 million people connected at any given time during the day, Demonii is currently the largest torrent tracker.

At the time of writing Demonii still serves torrents to 41,622,554 peers, which translates to well over a billion connections per day. Impressive numbers that will soon become history.

Demonii’s current stats

Even without Demonii most torrents will still work fine, thanks to DHT and PEX, but the initial connections will take more time. This can slow down download times for many people.

Trackers are also essential for those who use proxies, as they often have DHT and PEX disabled to prevent their real IP-addresses from leaking out.

With Demonii, YTS and YIFY gone there’s no doubt that the torrent ecosystem has lost several big players. However, history has also shown that these are never mourned for long.

It may be hard for other tracker to pick up Demonii’s load without increasing their capacity. But there are plenty of alternatives still around to fill the gap and more are expected to rise because of it.

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

The BitTorrent piracy ecosystem lost several key players in recent weeks.

The main Popcorn Time fork operating from the PopcornTime.io domain name closed its doors on October 23, citing internal issues.

Part of the trouble was started by rumors of legal pressure, which the MPAA confirmed today.

The major movie studios have sued three Popcorn Time developers in Canada, the group announced in an official statement. The MPAA obtained an injunction on October 16 ordering the shutdown of the Popcorntime.io site.

The complaint accuses the developers of various copyright infringing acts and also lists the VPN provider VPN.ht, which was operated by two of the Popcorn Time developers.

The complaint

The legal action in Canada was not an isolated incident, however. Around the same time, movie industry representatives targeted the operator of YTS/YIFY who’s a New Zealand resident.

The movie industry representatives had a warrant and threatened a multi-million dollar lawsuit, urging the operator to cooperate.

YTS went dark two weeks ago as a result of the legal trouble and is not coming back.

The status of the lawsuits in Canada and New Zealand is currently unclear, but sources told us last week that several of the accused are working on an agreement to minimize their harm, possibly in exchange for information.

The MPAA, meanwhile, is ready to declare the outcome as a clear victory.

“This coordinated legal action is part of a larger comprehensive approach being taken by the MPAA and its international affiliates to combat content theft,” MPAA boss Chris Dodd says.

“Popcorn Time and YTS are illegal platforms that exist for one clear reason: to distribute stolen copies of the latest motion picture and television shows without compensating the people who worked so hard to make them,” he adds.

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Update: The article was updated to remove some unrelated info, and add other bits and pieces that came in.

Update: The Popcorn Time injunction and claim (via HWR).

Breaking story, more info may follow later.

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

The makers of Dallas Buyers Club have sued thousands of BitTorrent users over the past two years.

Many of these cases end up being settled for an undisclosed amount. This usually happens after the filmmakers obtain the identity of the Internet account holder believed to have pirated the movie.

Not all alleged downloaders are eager to pay up though. In fact, many don’t respond to the settlement letters they receive or claim that someone else must have downloaded the film using their connection.

This presents a problem for the filmmakers, who need to gather additional evidence to prove guilt. In several recent cases they even went through social media profiles of defendants and Google map images of their neighborhoods, for example.

In addition to this info Dallas Buyers Club want to speak to the accused directly so have asked the court to grant dozens of depositions. This would help to determine who the true pirates are, they argue.

The request covers five active cases with 61 IP-addresses which have yet to respond or settle.

The court carefully reviewed the request and in an order late last week U.S. District Court Judge Richard Jones denied the depositions.

In his order (pdf) the Judge writes that depositions are meant to “discover relevant information” but he doubts that Dallas Buyers Club intends to take any of these cases to trial.

When the filmmakers were allowed to depose people in a previous case it didn’t result in the naming of any defendants.

“All this implies that Plaintiff is not actually interested in bringing these cases to conclusion on their merits and is instead trying to use these proceedings to leverage settlements out of unidentified Doe defendants through the threat of Court order.”

Instead, the depositions may be used as a pressure tool, which would be a clear sign of abuse.

“Numerous other courts have considered the possibility of abusive litigation tactics in addressing similar motions. And this Court is increasingly tired of the slow progress of these cases and increasingly apprehensive of the possibility of abuse,” Judge Jones adds.

The Judge admits that depositions may often be helpful, but notes that Dallas Buyers Club wouldn’t be in any better position if the defendant denies being the primary infringer during the deposition.

The filmmakers already have the name and address of the account holders, and should make their case based on this information, the order concludes.

While there’s no direct accusation the mention of possible abuse and the growing impatience with the many Doe lawsuits is a clear blow for the movie studio.

For their part the accused pirates can chalk up a win as they have been saved from having to go through an ‘interrogation’, a potentially threatening and intimidating process.

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

With a net income of more than $1 billion Elsevier is one of the largest academic publishers in the world.

Through its ScienceDirect portal the company offers access to millions of scientific articles spread out over 2,200 journals, most of which are behind a paywall.

Websites such as Sci-Hub and The Library Genesis Project, or Libgen for short, have systematically breached this barrier by hosting pirated copies of scientific publications as well as mainstream books.

Earlier this year one of the largest publishers went into action to stop this threat. Elsevier filed a complaint at a New York District Court, accusing the sites’ operators of systematic copyright infringement.

The publisher requested damages and asked for a preliminary injunction to prevent the sites from distributing their articles while the case is ongoing.

Late last week District Court Judge Robert Sweet approved the request (pdf), ordering the operators of Sci-Hub.org, Bookfi.org, Elibgen.org and several sister sites to cease their activities.

In addition, the responsible domain name registries are ordered to suspend the associated domain names until further notice.

Previously the Public Interest Registry (.ORG) refused to do so when Elsevier put in a request, noting that it would require a valid court order to suspend a domain name.

According to the order Elsevier showed that it’s likely to succeed based on its copyright infringement claims. In addition, there’s enough evidence to suggest that the defendants violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

“The balance of hardships clearly tips in favor of the Plaintiffs. Elsevier has shown that it is likely to succeed on the merits, and that it continues to suffer irreparable harm due to the Defendants’ making its copyrighted material available for free,” Judge Sweet writes.

The site’s operators have few grounds on which to fight the injunction, as they don’t have the right to distribute most of the articles in the first place.

“The Defendants cannot be legally harmed by the fact that they cannot continue to steal the Plaintiff’s content, even if they tried to do so for public-spirited reasons,” the order reads.

Alexandra Elbakyan, the founder of Sci-Hub, is the only person who responded to Elsevier’s complaint. In a letter she sent to the court before the injunction hearing, she argued that the publisher is exploiting researchers and blocking access to knowledge.

Judge Sweet agrees that there is a public interest to safeguard broad access to scientific research. However, simply putting all research online without permission is not the answer.

“Elbakyan’s solution to the problems she identifies, simply making copyrighted content available for free via a foreign website, disserves the public interest,” Judge Sweet writes.

The Judge notes that under current law researchers and the public are allowed to publicly share “ideas and insights” from the articles without restrictions. People can also freely use the copyrighted articles for research or educational purposes under the fair use doctrine.

“Under this doctrine, Elsevier’s articles themselves may be taken and used, but only for legitimate purposes, and not for wholesale infringement,” the order reads.

At the time of writing several of the websites, including Sci-hub.org and Bookfi.org, are still online. It is expected that they will be suspended by the registry in a matter of days.

Time will tell whether the site operators will also stop offering copyrighted articles, or if they will simply move to a new domain name and continue business as usual.

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

With millions of downloads per episode, Arrow is one of the most pirated TV-series of the year.

Featuring the DC Comic character Green Arrow the show is currently in its fourth season.

Many fans of the show are looking forward to the next episode later this week, where another DC Comic character will make his appearance. After a failed series on NBC, John Constantine will join the Arrow storyline.

Interestingly, not all fans will have to wait this long as thousands just jumped on a leaked copy that appeared online earlier today. Even though TV-show leaks are relatively rare, the fifth episode of Arrow was uploaded to public and private torrent sites a few hours ago.

The source of the leak is unknown but a warning screen at the starts shows that it originates from a preview copy, which was sent out for review by Warner Bros. Television.

The message warns the viewer not to distribute the video to third parties and suggests that the leaked version is not the final cut.

“The episode contained on this DVD is a rough cut and is not final. It may be missing key special visual effects, and additional sound effects and music are temporary,” it reads.

However, judging from the comments online the copy is fairly complete.

“Good copy, great episode, will grab the episode this week to see the changes but it doesn’t look like there will be much,” one commenter notes.

The video quality isn’t particularly great, which is usually the case with these type of leaks. Still, that won’t deter many from having a sneak peek.

Whether the leak will hurt the ratings, or if it will serve as a promotion for the “most important” episode of the season remains up for debate.

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