Author: Ernesto

Five years ago, several people connected to the video streaming and download site NinjaVideo were indicted by the U.S. Government on copyright infringement and conspiracy charges.

The landmark case resulted in several convictions, including a 22 month prison sentence for one the site’s founders, the outspoken Hana Beshara.

The convictions date back several years ago. Beshara, who received the longest sentence, served her time and was released last summer. However, that doesn’t mean that the case is closed.

One of the indicted NinjaVideo members, Zoi Mertzanis from Greece, is still at large. Mertzanis, AKA “Tik,” was allegedly one of the most active uploaders on the site.

“Mertzanis supervised most of the European-based uploaders, including directing uploaders to locate specific infringing copyrighted content for the NinjaVideo.net website,” the DoJ wrote in the indictment.

However, despite several successful convictions and plea agreements, the Greek resident still hasn’t been caught.

As a result, the now 40-year-old woman is currently featured on Interpol’s “wanted” list. Interpol issued a so-called “red notice” for the former Ninjavideo uploader, indicating that she’s wanted for extradition.

Mertzanis’ Red Notice listing on Interpol’s wanted site

According to our knowledge, Mertzanis is the only person associated with a streaming or download site listed on Interpol’s website.

TorrentFreak spoke to someone close to the Ninjavideo case who informed us that Mertzanis’ fugitive status has negative consequences for the convicted co-conspirators who already served their time. Because the case remains open, they are still waiting for the return of several personal items that were seized.

The Ninjavideo case has been one of the most prominent successes of the U.S. Government’s “Operation in Our Sites” campaign. If Mertzanis is caught and extradited, she is facing a prison sentence of at least several months, based on the previous convictions.

The harshest sentence was handed to NinjaVideo founder Hana Beshara, 22 months in prison and a payment of $210,000 in damages to the MPAA. Fellow admin Matthew Smith received 14 months in prison and was ordered to pay back just over $172,000.

Ninjavideo uploader Joshua Evans received 6 months in prison and $26,660 in restitution. Justin Dedemko was not listed as part of the NinjaVideo conspiracy, but was sentenced to 3 months in prison and ordered to repay the MPAA $58,004.

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

At TorrentFreak we have been keeping a close eye on the torrent ecosystem for more than a decade.

During this time, many sites have shut down, either voluntarily or forced by a court order.

This week meta-search engine Torrentz joined this ever-expanding list. In what appears to be a voluntary action, the site waved its millions of users farewell without prior warning.

The site’s operators have yet to explain their motivations. However, it wouldn’t be a big surprise if the continued legal pressure on torrent sites played a major role, with KAT as the most recent example.

And let’s be honest. Running a site that could make you the target of an FBI investigation, facing over a dozen years in prison, is no joke.

Looking back at the largest torrent sites of the past 15 years, we see a familiar pattern emerge. Many of the sites that make it to the top eventually fall down, often due to legal pressure.

Suprnova (2004)

Suprnova was one of the first ever BitTorrent giants. Founded by the Slovenian-born Andrej Preston, the site dominated the torrent scene during the early days.

It was also one of the first torrent sites to be targeted by the authorities. In November 2004 the site’s servers were raided, and a month later Preston, aka Sloncek, decided to shut it down voluntarily. The police investigation was eventually dropped a few months later.

Lokitorrent (2005)

When Suprnova went down a new site was quick to fill its void. LokiTorrent soon became one of the largest torrent sites around, which also attracted the attention of the MPAA.

LokiTorrent’s owner Ed Webber said he wanted to fight the MPAA and actively collected donations to pay for the legal costs. With success, as he raised over $40,000 in a few weeks.

However, not long after that, LokiTorrent was shut down, and all that was left was the iconic “You can click but you can’t hide” MPAA notice.

TorrentSpy (2008)

In 2006 TorrentSpy was more popular than any other BitTorrent site. This quickly changed when it was sued by the MPAA. In 2007 a federal judge ordered TorrentSpy to log all user data and the site opted to ban all U.S. traffic in response.

March 2008 TorrentSpy owner Justin Bunnell decided to shut down completely and not much later his company was ordered to pay the Hollywood studios $110 million in damages.

Mininova (2009)

After TorrentSpy’s demise, Mininova became the largest torrent site on the net. The name was inspired by Suprnova, but in 2008 the site was many times larger than its predecessor.

Its popularity eventually resulted in a lawsuit from local anti-piracy outfit BREIN, which Mininova lost. As a result, the site had to remove all infringing torrents, a move which effectively ended its reign.

Today the site is still online, limiting uploads to pre-approved publishers, making it a ghost of the giant it was in the past.

BTJunkie (2012)

In 2012, shortly after the Megaupload raid, torrent site BTJunkie shut down voluntarily.

Talking to TorrentFreak, BTjunkie’s founder said that the legal actions against other file-sharing sites played an important role in making the difficult decision. Witnessing all the trouble his colleagues got into was a constant cause of worry and stress.

“We’ve been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it’s time to move on. It’s been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best,” he wrote in a farewell message.

isoHunt (2013)

The shutdown of isoHunt a year later wasn’t much of a surprise. The site had been fighting a legal battle with the MPAA for over a decade and eventually lost, agreeing to pay the movie studios a $110m settlement.

As one of the oldest and largest sites at the time, the torrent ecosystem lost another icon. However, as is often the case, another site with the same name quickly took over and is still operating today.

EZTV (2015)

The story of EZTV’s demise is quite different from the rest. The popular TV-torrent distribution group shut down last year after a hostile takeover.

Strangely enough, many people don’t even realize that it’s “gone.” The site continued to operate under new ownership and still releases torrents. However, in solidarity with the original founders these torrents are banned on several other sites.

YIFY/YTS (2015)

What started as a simple movie release group in 2010 turned into one of the largest torrent icons. The group amassed a huge following and its website was generating millions of pageviews per day early last year.

In November 2015 this ended abruptly. Facing a million dollar lawsuit from Hollywood, the group’s founder decided to pull the plug and call it quits. Even though various copycats have since emerged, the real YIFY/YTS is no more.

KickassTorrents (2016)

Three weeks ago Polish law enforcement officers arrested Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of KickassTorrents. The arrest resulted in the shutdown of the site, which came as a shock to millions of KAT users and the torrent community at large.

Out of nowhere, the largest torrent index disappeared and there are no signs that it’s coming back anytime soon. The site’s community, meanwhile, has found a new home at Katcr.to.

Torrentz (2016)

Torrentz is the last torrent site to cease its operations. Although no official explanation was given, some of the stories outlined above were probably weighed into the founders’ decision.

—

So what will the future bring? Who will be the next giant to fall? It’s obvious that nearly nothing last forever in the torrent ecosystem. Well, apart from the ever-resilient Pirate Bay.

And there are several other alternatives still around as well. ExtraTorrent has been around for a decade now and continues to grow, and the same is true for other popular torrent sites.

At least, for now…

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

Last month KickassTorrents (KAT) was shut down by the U.S. Government, following the arrest of the site’s alleged owner.

Soon after the official site went offline various mirrors and copies launched to take its place, attracting hundreds of thousands of users.

One of the most popular mirrors started as KAT.am. The site was featured in several news reports with some suggesting that it’s an official reincarnation of KAT.

While the site has nothing to do with the original site, Hollywood was not happy, which resulted in a swift domain suspension. However, at the time of writing, the site continues to operate from the kickass.cd and kickass.mx domain names.

Those who visit the site will notice that it does indeed look a lot like the original KAT site. However, upon closer inspection is doesn’t even appear to be a mirror. Not of KAT at least.

Instead, the site is merely serving content from another well-known torrent site, The Pirate Bay.

This is best illustrated by comparing searches on both sites. Without exception, these return the exact same results in the same order, with the same numbers of seeds and peers.

For example, a search for “TPB AFK” returns 64 results on the Kickass.mx “mirror,” with the uploads from “SimonKlose” and MVGroup listed on top. These are all torrents that were originally added years ago.

The same search on The Pirate Bay returns identical results, without exception. Even the upload timestamps are exactly the same as on the KAT “mirror”.

As if that’s not enough, the recent torrents listings also show the same torrents, uploaded by the same usernames.

Of course, there is no recent KAT content to mirror, so the site has to use an external source for these. However, as far as we can see, all torrents on the site are being pulled from TPB, not KAT.

For comparison, a search for “TPB AFK” on a real KAT mirror shows a widget with movie details, which KAT had in place, as well as entirely different torrents uploaded by different users.

The screenshot below is taken from the Kickasstorrents.to mirror, which is a true mirror and doesn’t have any recent torrents.

With the above in mind it’s clear that the operators of the Kickass.mx and Kickass.cd mirrors are not being entirely truthful, as they are no longer relying on a database of KAT torrents as previously claimed.

It could be that they started out this way, but at the moment it’s little more than a dressed-up TPB mirror.

These type of misleading claims are not new of course. The same happened when YIFY disappeared last year. With millions of estranged users it can be quite lucrative to “hijack” a popular brand such as KAT.

In any case, former KAT users should be aware that not everything they see on the Internet is what they believe it is, but I guess that’s no surprise by now.

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

Founded in 2003, Torrentz has been a stable factor in the torrent community for over 13 years.

With millions of visitors per day the site grew out to become one of the most visited torrent sites, but today this reign ends, as the popular meta-search engine has announced its shutdown.

A few hours ago and without warning, Torrentz disabled its search functionality. At first sight the main page looks normal but those who try to find links to torrents will notice that they’re no longer there.

Instead, the site is now referring to itself in the past tense, suggesting that after more than a decade the end has arrived.

“Torrentz was a free, fast and powerful meta-search engine combining results from dozens of search engines,” the text reads.

TorrentFreak was contacted by the operator of Torrentz, who prefers not to comment at the moment. It’s clear, however, that another major torrent site is shutting down, leaving a gaping hole.

Breaking story, more updates will follow

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

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

The rightsholder-backed group doesn’t target random file-sharers but mostly focuses on prolific uploaders.

Over the past few months the group has gone after several torrent site uploaders, with some success. However, BREIN’s enforcement actions go further than BitTorrent alone, they also keep an eye on Usenet.

This week the anti-piracy group announced that it has settled a dispute with a large-scale Usenet uploader, who shared over 18,000 music albums, discographies, and compilations.

The man agreed to pay €15,000 in damages and stop his activities effective immediately. If not, an ex-parte court order requires him to pay an additional fine up to €50,000

According to court records, BREIN used the message-id of NZB files to confirm that the man was indeed the uploader, and also linked these to posts he made on NZB spot-sites.

After he received the court order, the uploader posted a message on one such site informing fellow users that he had been forced to quit.

“This morning I was ‘honored’ with a visit from the bailiff on behalf of BREIN. To cut a long story short, I am sentenced to pay a hefty sum of money for my work as a spotter / poster. Perhaps there are people who would just continue, but I’m out,” the uploader wrote.

BREIN director Tim Kuik is happy with the outcome and stresses that they have their sights set on pirates of all kinds.

“BREIN previously announced that it would expand its actions against illegal uploaders. This doesn’t only affect BitTorrent uploaders as in previous cases this year, but also uploaders to Usenet and file-hosters or cyberlockers” Kuik says.

“In addition to the present case, there are still more investigations ongoing. We don’t warn illegal uploaders, but immediately offer them a settlement. If someone does not want to settle, a court proceeding will follow, to recover the full damages and costs,” he adds.

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

Looking ahead, BREIN is planning to go after uploaders on a much larger scale to increase the catch-rate.

The anti-piracy group has started to systematically monitor IP-addresses of torrent swarms, in order to identify the IP-addresses of prolific sharers. They then hope to identify the account holders through their Internet providers.

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

When Windows 10 was launched last year, rumors spread that the operating system was equipped with a built-in piracy kill switch.

According to some reports, this would allow Microsoft to nuke all torrents downloaded from The Pirate Bay, and more. A scary outlook, but also a massive exaggeration, for now.

The controversy originated from a single line in Microsoft’s Service Agreement which allows the company to download software updates and configuration changes that may prevent people from “playing counterfeit games.”

Technically this allows Microsoft to block people from playing pirated games across Windows 10 and other services, but thus far there is no indication that this is happening.

However, this week the issue was highlighted again in a report published by Black Market Watch and the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, which made several recommendations on how online piracy could be tackled in Sweden.

While most of the media attention focused on the role of ISPs, there is an even more controversial proposal that has been largely overlooked. According to the report, pirated content should be banned on the operating system level.

“Other players that possess the potential ability to limit piracy are the companies that own the major operating systems which control computers and mobile devices such as Apple, Google and Microsoft,” one of the main conclusions reads.

“The producers of operating systems should be encouraged, or regulated, for example, to block downloads of copyright infringing material,” the report adds.

The report references last year’s Windows 10 controversy, noting that these concerns were great enough for some torrent sites to block users with the new operating system.

While Sweden doesn’t have enough influence to make an impact on these global software manufacturers, applying pressure through the international community and trade groups may have some effect.

“Sweden’s ability to influence this as a single state is small, but it can take action through the EU and the international community. Copyright holders can also play a role in promoting this through international industry associations,” the report notes.

For now, it’s unlikely that the plan will become reality in the near future.

Yesterday, Swedish ISP Bahnhof responded to the report by saying that it doesn’t want to act as piracy police, and Apple, Google and Microsoft are not going to be happy with this role either.

However, it’s clear that anti-piracy proposals are getting more extreme year after year.

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

Two weeks ago Polish law enforcement officers arrested Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of KickassTorrents.

The arrest resulted in the shutdown of the site, which came as a shock to millions of KAT users and the torrent community at large.

Out of nowhere, the largest torrent index disappeared and there are no signs that it’s coming back anytime soon. The same is true for the torrent hosting platform Torcache.net, which KAT actively used.

While there are no official links between the two sites, it seems likely that Torcache was taken down following KAT’s troubles. This means that it will probably remain offline for the time being.

This has caused trouble for several other torrent sites which also relied on Torcache, such as 1337x.to and Monova.

As is often the case, however, when one service disappears several others are ready to take its place. The situation is no different here, as iTorrents.org is already advertising itself as a Torcache replacement.

Mimicking the same layout, which was first pioneered by Torrage, another defunct service, iTorrents offers a dedicated torrent storage platform.

iTorrents.org

TorrentFreak spoke to the operator of iTorrents.org, who also manages LimeTorrents.cc and TorrentDownloads.me. He says that 1337x.to has come on board already and he invites other torrent sites to join as well.

“Currently 1337x and our own sites are using itorrents.org. I hope more webmasters start using it soon, because there is no other torrent storage cache available now.”

In addition to 1337x, several KAT mirrors have also switched to iTorrents to replace the non-functional Torcache links.

iTorrents was officially launched earlier this year when the operator found out that Torcache was blocked in several countries. He is now planning to upgrade the server, so the service can cope with the increase in traffic.

While iTorrents may be able to replace Torcache, the aftermath of the KAT shutdown is still being felt by many of its former users.

For many people, KickassTorrents was a community above all else, and a harddrive full of torrents isn’t going to replace that.

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

Around the world copyright holder groups are lobbying for increased efforts to combat online piracy.

The situation is no different in Sweden, where the Black Market Watch group just published a report calling for increased cooperation from stakeholders such as advertisers and ISPs.

In an opinion piece for DN, Internet providers are accused of handsomely profiting from their inaction, generating an estimated 2.5 billion Swedish krona ($230 million) from piracy.

“According to our calculations, revenue for Swedish Internet providers potentially exceeds two-and-a-half billion kronor a year, much more than the pirate sites earn,” Black Market Watch co-founder Karl Lallerstedt writes, together with the report’s co-author Waldemar Ingdahl.

They argue that Internet providers are in a unique position to prevent copyright infringement, as they can see what their users do online and have the means to block websites.

Speaking with IDG, Jon Karlung, CEO of Internet provider Bahnhof, refutes these calls and discredits the profit claims as lobbyist nonsense.

“It is pure nonsense, there is no truth in it. This is the work of their business lobbyists who want to put more responsibility on us. Our task is to ensure an internet with free movement, not playing cops,” he says.

Ideally, rightholders would like to see a series of measures being introduced to combat copyright infringement. This includes easier domain name seizures, increased anti-piracy efforts from law enforcement and ISPs, plus better education about the risks of piracy.

According to Karlung, Bahnhof already does enough to alert subscribers about unsafe sites. It is also happy to assist law enforcement but the company doesn’t see itself proactively policing its network to catch pirates.

“We inform users about unsafe sites today, and we will continue to do so without copyright holders instructing us what to do,” Karlung says.

“If there is merit to the Swedish legislation, we will help the police if they can show in a documented manner that the servers are being used for illegal activities. But it is not our job to act, they themselves must identify the type of activities.”

The copyright holder requests go directly against one of the core goals of the company – protecting the privacy of its subscribers. In recent years the Internet provider has fought hard to guarantee this right.

Bahnhof has been a major opponent of extensive data retention requirements, launched a free VPN to its users, and recently vowed to protect subscribers from a looming copyright troll invasion.

Given the above, it’s unlikely that rightsholders can expect much voluntary cooperation from Bahnhof.

This stance doesn’t come as a surprise, and the report suggests that rightsholders should demand new legislation from Swedish lawmakers to force ISPs and other stakeholders into action.

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

Despite the growing availability of legal options, online piracy remains rampant. Every day pirate sites are visited hundreds of millions of times.

Piracy tracking outfit MUSO has documented the piracy landscape with data from 14,000 of the largest global piracy sites. In total, the company recorded 141 billion visits to pirate sites last year alone.

But where are these pirates coming from?

In absolute numbers the United States clearly comes out on top. With nearly 10 billion visits to streaming portals and over 3 billion to torrent sites, the U.S. beats all other countries.

Perhaps not a surprise, as the U.S. is one of the largest countries in the world with a high Internet penetration. Things get more interesting, however, when we look at the piracy rate based on the number of Internet users around the world.

Data MUSO exclusively shared with TorrentFreak, shows that different countries float to the top when the Internet population is taken into account.

A comparison of the top 50 countries with the most piracy traffic shows that Europe in particular has a persistent piracy problem. In fact, all of the 10 countries with the highest online piracy rates are in Europe.

Latvia comes out on top with a massive 46% of the Internet users visiting pirate sites, followed by Bulgaria, Lithuania, Croatia, Spain and Greece. The top 10 piracy havens is completed by Serbia, Ireland, Romania and Sweden.

The first non-European country in the list is Australia, with a piracy rate of 16%, followed by Israel. Canada is the first North American country, located in the middle of the bunch, with a piracy rate of 11%.

When taking the size of the Internet population into account, the United States is actually one of the countries with the lowest piracy rates, just under 5%. The UK also has a modest piracy rate with nearly 8%.

Most surprising, perhaps, is the low piracy rate in Germany, where less than 2% of the Internet population are considered to be “pirates.” Vietnam closes the list with just over 1%.

The dataset includes visits to both international and local pirate sites, and MUSO believes that it’s an accurate overview of the global piracy landscape. The current list is based on data from 2015 and it will be interesting to see if these rankings will change over time.

—

Below is the top 50 in reverse order. China, Japan and Korea were excluded as MUSO didn’t have sufficient sites representing these countries to accurately include them.

Top 50 pirate countries by relative piracy rank.

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.

Independence Day: Resurgence, which came out as HDRip with Korean subtitles, 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 Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(10)	Independence Day: Resurgence (Subbed HDRip)	5.6 / trailer
2	(…)	The Nice Guys	7.7 / trailer
3	(3)	Batman: The Killing Joke	7.3 / trailer
4	(1)	X-Men: Apocalypse (Subbed HDRip)	7.7 / trailer
5	(4)	Warcraft (subbed HDRip)	7.7 / trailer
6	(2)	Central Intelligence	6.9 / trailer
7	(8)	The Secret Life of Pets (HDTS)	6.8 / trailer
8	(…)	Jason Bourne (CAM)	7.4 / trailer
9	(…)	The Angry Birds Movie	6.3 / trailer
10	(5)	The Purge: Election Year (subbed HDRip)	6.3 / trailer

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