Filesharing
Police Keep Their Word, Shut Down File-Sharing Sites
In late April a memorandum was signed by Bulgaria’s Interior Ministry and the IFPI which effectively declared war on music piracy in the country.
Within days of this announcement Yavor Kolev, the head of Bulgaria’s Computer Crimes Department, stated on national TV that he would begin taking tough action against BitTorrent sites and other file-sharing locations, especially those that profit from their activities.
“We will shut down Zamunda and Arena BG and their servers that supply pirated movies and music and take money from their users via premium SMS,” Kolev told the media. However, neither site takes money from BitTorrent users in this way, instead generating income from advertising. This week it became clear that other sites would be targeted first.
According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it has just carried out “the largest ever operation against Internet piracy in Bulgaria”.
Four file-sharing sites were targeted – nanoset.net (which advertised new releases via Twitter), rapidadd.com, 4storing.com and afasta.com. They are accused of distributing music, movies, books and software without the permission of copyright holders and as of today, all four remain down.
After several months of investigations, on a judge’s authorization and under the supervision of the Deputy District Prosecutor, on Thursday authorities moved against the sites. It is being claimed that they were being operated by “an organized crime group” which employed “sophisticated mechanisms for concealing the location of their servers”.
Nevertheless, as can be seen from the photos below and the video here, servers -18 in all containing a claimed 120TB – were found. Computer equipment and documents were also seized from the office of a 37 year-old man who is claimed to be the organizer behind the “criminal activity”. He was arrested.
Seized Hardware More Seized HardwareThe Ministry goes on to state the operators of the websites had been profiting from the distribution of copyright content to the tune of $3.34 million by charging users to access material via premium SMS services. One TorrentFreak reader familiar with the situation noted that SMS providers in Bulgaria can take as much as 40-50% of each SMS payment, so the amount allegedly generated should be treated with caution.
While the four busted sites did accept SMS payments, as with many one click hosters, premium accounts with greater features were available for a price. The sites also gave users the ability to use their facilities for free.
Although the head of Bulgaria’s Computer Crimes Department had threatened action against Zamunda and Arena BG “and their servers that supply pirated movies and music and take money from their users via premium SMS”, both torrent sites remain operational today. However, research on the backgrounds of two of the raided sites, 4Storing and Afasta, appears to show some earlier links to ArenaBG although the exact nature of these connections remain unclear.
Article from: TorrentFreak.
U.S. Copyright Group ‘Steal’ Competitor’s Website
During May this year the makers of The Hurt Locker filed a complaint against the first 5,000 ‘John Does’. Helped by the U.S. Copyright Group (USCG), the film makers are requesting the personal details of individuals behind the IP-addresses that allegedly shared the film on BitTorrent.
With these personal details in hand, USCG is planning to send out a batch of settlement requests asking the alleged file-sharers to pay amounts up to $2,500, or risk a full trial and a heftier fine instead. In recent months USCG has already sent out similar ‘speculative invoices’ to downloaders of other films, including the indie movie Far Cry.
It’s needless to say that the administrative process to handle thousands of settlements will involve quite a bit of work. To make this easier for themselves and the alleged downloaders, USCG recently put up a settlement website where visitors to their main website Copyrightsettlements.info are redirected to.
By itself the mere existence of this settlement portal wouldn’t really be newsworthy, but this changed when we realized that they had copied it from a competitor.
Six weeks ago a TorrentFreak reader alerted us that USCG was setting up a new website to deal with the settlements. Instead of coding the site themselves, they had simply copied the code (including the copyright statement) and images from a company in the same line of work. The images below show how both sites looked at the time.
Copied website before it was stripped (large) Source (large)
Because the USCG site was hosted on a force.com subdomain, we weren’t able to verify the legitimacy of this site to find out if there was indeed a direct connection to USCG. To be honest, we simply couldn’t believe that USCG would be stupid enough to blatantly rip-off a website like this, so we assumed that someone had tried to pull off a prank.
A month after the email, however, the same site popped up again when we tried to access the website of USCG. Although the original layout was stripped down significantly over the past weeks, the website still uses code and images from the Copyright Enforcement Group.
Initially, USCG even listed their competitor’s phone number on their site, but they were wise enough to remove this and other texts that refer to the Copyright Enforcement Group. That said, there is no doubt that USCG’s website is ‘stolen’.
Both the source code and the copied image names clearly reveal that the code was blatantly copied from their competitors. Armed with this knowledge we decided to contact the victims of this apparent violation to ask if they had perhaps authorized this use. The answer we got was clear.
“Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We are not associated with the US Copyright Group and they are not authorized to use Copyright Enforcement Group materials,” a representative of the Copyright Enforcement Group told TorrentFreak in a response.
The same representative told TorrentFreak that the US Copyright Group and Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver will be receiving a cease and desist from Copyright Enforcement Group.
Of course, we’ve seen this type of behavior before. The UK’s ACS:Law, also writing to thousands of file-sharers demanding cash payments for alleged infringements, aren’t whiter than white either. They took sections of several news articles and tried, unsuccessfully, to pass them off as their own content on their company website.
So there we have it once again. An outfit that targets copyright infringers is actively infringing copyright themselves. They are so incompetent and probably blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes, that they can’t even put a website together without breaking the law themselves – copyright law.
Update: USCG has started to remove some images after our post. This file, among others, has been replaced by a ‘placeholder’. A confession?
Update: They removed even more images. Also, their ‘copyright’ text was stolen as well…
Article from: TorrentFreak.
uTorrent Web Now Available on iPad and Android
This year BitTorrent Inc. has been very active with the development of uTorrent. The company pushed out two experimental clients, codenamed Falcon and Griffin, which are bundled in the latest uTorrent 3.0 alpha release.
Both projects add several new features to uTorrent. The Griffin branch of uTorrent adds Apps for uTorrent support, allowing users to easily install extensions and add custom features. The Falcon project enables users to stream torrent video files and access their client remotely through a secure web-interface.
With uTorrent ‘Web’, users can access torrents running on their PC from anywhere in the world, on any computer they have access to. Torrents can be added, paused and removed using an interface with a look and feel identical to that of the uTorrent application.
Initially, uTorrent ‘Web’ was only available on standard PC browsers, but last month iPhone support was added. Now, after many requests from uTorrent users, the remote control feature is now compatible with the iPad and Android devices.
“Since launching µTorrent Web for iPhone, users have been clamoring for something similar on other devices,” BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management Simon Morris announced. “So, today we are very excited to announce support for the iPad and Android platform – including the Nexus One and Google Ion devices. Now you can control torrents via your web browser on a PC, iPhone, iPad and Android.”
The response from users of the remote control feature has been quite positive thus far, but there’s also a group of people who are reluctant to try the service because of privacy concerns. The ‘agreement’ between the MPAA and BitTorrent Inc. is still not forgotten by everyone, even though that only applied to BitTorrent Inc’s now defunct search engine. Morris, however, ensures that users’ privacy is in good hands with BitTorrent Inc.
“Just like with µTorrent Web for iPhone, we continue to take users’ privacy very seriously – all your private data is encrypted from the moment it leaves your browser right to the client on the other end. So, as before, users can rest assured that the private details of their µTorrent usage are never exposed to BitTorrent Inc. or any third parties,” he says.
In order to use the web interface, users will first have to download and install the latest Falcon release or uTorrent 3.0 alpha. In the client users can set a username and password that they can use to access their torrents remotely. After an encryption swipe and logging in, users will see the mobile compatible interface that gives them all the controls they are familiar with in their regular PC client.
Article from: TorrentFreak.
BitTorrent Releasers Are The New Kids On The Piracy Block
In our earlier article, BitTorrent Releasers Slice The Top Off Movie Piracy Pyramid, we took a first look at the growing phenomenon of blockbuster movies appearing on the Internet directly via BitTorrent. Traditionally, most movies have trickled down from ‘The Scene’, a network of highly secure servers and individuals with one critical flaw – everything they share privately leaks out to the wider Internet.
However, release groups inhabiting P2P networks such as BitTorrent are now sometimes managing to beat the old-schoolers to the punch, providing movies quicker and increasingly in better quality. So how are they pulling this off?
KoOlWaReZ, the admin of P2PElite, a new site currently under development with the aim of providing a home, profile and a central location for P2P release groups so they can interact with the public, says that while the Scene do a good job on quality and in many previous cases still get material first, times are changing.
“I’d say about two years ago, Scene had a nice grasp on getting things first, but lately anyone who has followed both Scene/P2P equally will know that P2P groups these days have more contacts,” he told TorrentFreak.
By default the super-secret nature of the Scene renders them hard to find. P2P groups, on the other hand, are a lot more accessible, which means that those who have access to movies can get them to these potential distributors a lot more easily. While in the past only the Scene could take credit for putting a first run movie onto the Internet first, increasingly those bragging rights are taken by P2P groups. So what motivates these individuals to do what they do?
Two groups, which asked to remain anonymous, were in agreement with the other groups in citing the overwhelming urge to share and the feelings of achievement associated with seeing tens of thousands of peers on torrents created by them. Others were prepared to speak on the record.
“My main reason aside from any other would be because of my affiliation with a certain community which me and other friends manage and run,” prolific releaser Noir told TorrentFreak.
However, altruism aside, there is another clear attraction for groups to release on P2P – an absolute lack of bureaucracy. Through years of tradition building, some of it well intentioned, some of it verging on the ridiculous, the Scene has accumulated a mind-boggling array of rules and regulations to which all members and releases must adhere. P2P releasers, on the other hand, are free to do whatever they like.
“[We release on P2P] because there are no specific rules to encode to,” release group PrisM told TorrentFreak. “We can encode to a better quality within our own standards, and try and make the best quality the source permits. We can also use all sources available.”
KoOlWaReZ also agreed that some of the grounds used in the Scene for a ‘nuking’ (an action taken against a release to disallow it) or even not nuking a release can affect quality and availability of releases. In the scenario below, a better quality version of a movie would be disallowed not due to lack of availability, but due to Scene rules.
“You pre a CAM [release a camcorder version of a movie], it doesn’t get nuked so the next group who has a much better CAM can’t use it now until they get direct line [for the audio track] to pre [release] a TS [Telesync - a cammed version of a movie with audio from a better quality direct source],” KoOlWaReZ explained. “What about the public? In the meantime we get to watch some funky flickering green tinted shit job.”
Others also agree that Scene rules have the potential to hold back the end product.
“The Scene has specific rules which diminish quality, while in P2P having no rules you see some encoders doing a little less than ‘masterpieces’,” says Noir. “You will see P2P putting in more effort into making a video look the same or better than the source itself with the use of filtering. So generally you will see better quality videos from P2P encoders.”
So does this mean that P2P release groups will eventually beat the Scene at their own game? Our contacts generally believed that over time that possibility definitely exists, but noted that P2P groups have a way to go and still owe a lot to their more exclusive cousins.
“The Scene is quite large, larger then P2P, and I have to say it’s more sophisticated,” notes Noir. “If it weren’t for the Scene, most of us in P2P at this moment would not be here.”
While Noir’s innumerable releases appear on both public and private trackers, PrisM favor private sites with acronyms such as TL, BB, THS, MH, SP, TA, PTF. Those with Google and 5 minutes spare will find them easily. Other release groups we spoke with weren’t keen to say where they release first, but it’s clear that most releases end up on public trackers soon enough, just like the majority of Scene releases.
Inevitably we asked about security. PrisM told us that they tend to support private sites since they’re “more secure” and Noir told us that that although more open than the Scene, P2P groups take enough precautions to stay safe.
“Security on releasing P2P is at a very high standard now and a lot better than 3 years ago,” says PrisM. “The Scene has good security but it also creates ‘hotspots’ for companies like BREIN to investigate highly used servers which is a high risk.”
Two other groups contacted by TorrentFreak refused point blank to talk about their security and shrugged off suggestions that these days their work is very exposed. Questions about their sources went largely unanswered too, but a general theme was “from all the usual places, from all the usual suspects.” Noir acknowledged that things are getting more difficult, but said releases will continue to flow.
“I have been doing this for over 3 years now, and can gladly say I still enjoy it. P2P in general has changed quite a bit since. Although laws are getting harsher and things are getting harder, I’m still happy I can release a movie to a mass community which can entertain themselves for a few hours with family and friends. I’ll do this until I can’t anymore.”
As with all Scene vs P2P debates during the last decade, the comments below this article will inevitably contain arguments about who was really ‘first’ with a release, who stole what source from who, and who re-encoded someone else’s work, ad infinitum. While a few years ago P2P nearly always ‘stole’ the Scene’s work, these days it’s not unknown for the Scene to ‘steal’ the work of P2P groups. This has happened on a number of notable occasions recently, not least on the releases of Wolverine and the James Cameron blockbuster, Avatar.
But while the Scene always get uppity about this situation, it seems that most P2P groups don’t really care.
“We don’t really mind,” say PrisM. “After all, we do this to share with the world, so anyone is welcome to use what they want for whatever reason. We re-encode Scene releases, so they can feel free to do the same to ours. It’s what were about – sharing!”
It’s also probably fair to say that most BitTorrent downloaders don’t care about the source either, as long as the outcome is good. And two sources, as they say, must be better than one.
Article from: TorrentFreak.
Finnish ISPs to Warn Pirating Customers
Finland is known as one of the most forward thinking countries when it comes to the Internet. Earlier this year Finland made a broadband connection a fundamental right of its citizens where every Fin has the right to at least a 1Mbps Internet connection.
In common with many other countries around the world, Finland also has to deal with an active pro-copyright lobby that wants the local Government to crack down on widespread Internet piracy. According to Elisa and Sonera, two of the country’s largest ISPs, the total number of file-sharers in Finland lies well above 50 percent.
To deal with this piracy problem the Finnish Government has now drafted new legislation that would require Internet providers to send warning letters to those who are suspected of illicit downloading. In this scenario, ISPs would be notified of possible infringements by investigation outfits hired by the entertainment industries.
The legislation is similar to that of other countries in Europe, such as the UK and France. The only difference is that the warning letters in Finland will have no consequences at all. They merely serve as an educational message, or a threat, depending on how one interprets the letters.
Because of this lack of enforcement power the local anti-piracy outfit is not too excited about the Government’s plans.
“The problem is that there are no repercussions with this model. A person could get ten letters about illegally sharing material online, and that’s it. This model is ineffective in our opinion,” said Antti Kotilainen, the director of the Anti-piracy Centre.
Finnish Pirate Party chairman Pasi Palmulehto, who generally disagrees with his counterpart at the Anti-piracy Centre, doesn’t think much of the proposal either, but for different reasons.
“This whole warning letter proposal is a clear sign of how far our government is on copyright organizations’ leash. The proposed law itself has no function at all. One can receive 50 warning letters without any consequences,” Pasi Palmulehto told TorrentFreak.
According to The Pirate Party chairman the letters would violate the privacy of Internet users as it encourages private organizations to spy on Internet subscribers. Besides that, the Pirate Party sees the proposal as a waste of money where, ironically, the entertainment industry will cut into their own profits since they have to pay the companies that will have to spy on Internet users.
“Most likely the warning letters themselves will have no effect on most Internet users, but those who actually get scared will probably start using secure and proxy/vpn connections,” Pasi Palmulehto said. According to the Pirate Party chairman there is only one way to deal with Internet piracy.
“There is no need for alternatives to the warning letter process. It is a complete fail and the public is better off without it. The only real alternative is also a long term improvement and that is to legalize non-profit file-sharing,” he said.
Despite the criticism from opposing sides, the proposal will be voted on in the Finnish Parliament in the near future. If it passes it could be signed into law before the and of the year.
Article from: TorrentFreak.
Pirate Party Offers Servers and Hosting To Wikileaks
After giving The New York Times, The Guardian and Germany’s Der Spiegel an early viewing, this week WikiLeaks released tens of thousands of confidential U.S. military documents.
Since then there have been thousands of follow up stories which continue today, as people pick through the information on offer and try to work out what it means for authorities around the world and especially the U.S. Government.
While some are trying to play down the implications for the ongoing war in Afghanistan, Wikileaks chief Julian Assange has been more forceful and has suggested that some of the documents show evidence of war crimes carried out by the U.S. military.
When added to the outrage caused by the recent ‘Collateral Murder‘ video, Wikileaks is developing quite a problem for itself. Yesterday Assange revealed that he had learned that there had been discussions to charge him “as a co-conspirator to espionage.”
Although it appears those discussions were later dropped, Assange still believes that he could be forcefully detained by the U.S. as a witness in the prosecution of intelligence analyst and video-leaker, Bradley Manning. But while concerns persist over Assange’s personal position, some are already considering the implications for the Wikileaks site itself.
“It would not surprise me at all if Sweden is shortly subjected to American pressure to shut down Wikileaks,” says Anna Troberg of the Swedish Pirate Party. “They have acted similarly in terms of The Pirate Bay, and given that Wikileaks’ activities strikes at the very heart of American power, it’s probably just a matter of time before they act.”
“Now is the moment of truth for our Swedish politicians. Will they have enough backbone to stand up on Wikileaks and democracy, or will they give way to the U.S. and go after PRQ and Wikileaks?”
PRQ is the Sweden-based company run by Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij of Pirate Bay fame that currently provides hosting to Wikileaks. Although absolutely no stranger to coming under pressure over the sites they host, should PRQ become vulnerable, Wikileaks now have a backup offer on the table.
Never an entity to shy away from the free flow of information, no matter where it lies or whoever might claim ownership of it, the Swedish Pirate Party recently announced that it would become bandwidth supplier to The Pirate Bay. It now says that if the going gets too rough for Wikileaks and PRQ, they will offer the whistleblower site both servers and hosting too.
“The Pirate Party will under no circumstances give in to pressure,” says Troberg. “We now help democracy activists in Iran, including communication via anonymous servers. We provide bandwidth to our greatest political opinion leaders, The Pirate Bay. If Wikileaks is attacked again, we will immediately offer them both server space and bandwidth.”
“The Pirate Party believes in democracy and we are not afraid to stand up for it.”
Article from: TorrentFreak.
uMap: Show Your uTorrent Peers in Google Maps
In order for BitTorrent to work, clients need IP-addresses of people who are sharing the same files. Aside from being linked to a customer account at an ISP, IP-addresses also provide data on the geographical location of its users.
Although not always 100% accurate, IP-addresses can be linked to the physical location of users, or at least to the city they’re in. Quite a few BitTorrent users are probably already aware of this since most BitTorrent clients list the countries fellow downloaders come from.
One of the latest additions to uTorrent’s App directory takes location awareness a step further. Named uMap, the application displays all your peers on a Google Map, with the option to zoom into the street level. With uMap you can literally check where your peers live.
The App has several ways to display the data. File-sharers can be viewed by the BitTorrent client they use, the country they come from or the swarm they’re currently participating in. uMap was added to the App directory and can now be installed in the latest Griffin release of uTorrent.
uMaps in action
We’ve tried the App, and although it’s not really that useful, it is interesting to see the huge differences between various torrents and the sites one downloads from. On most public torrents uTorrent and Vuze were the dominant clients, but on a private tracker quite a few seedboxes showed up, some packed together near a big datacenter.
For some novice users uMap might be an eye-opener, since it shows that BitTorrent transfers are far from anonymous. Those who want to hide their real location from other BitTorrent users might want to consider renting a seedbox or signing up for an account at specialized privacy services such as BTGuard and TorrentPrivacy.
Zooming in
Article from: TorrentFreak.
BitTorrent Releasers Slice The Top Off Movie Piracy Pyramid
In a nutshell, this is how online movie piracy has worked in recent times. Using their connections, so-called ‘Scene’ release groups – who inhabit secretive and highly exclusive servers, off limits to regular Internet users – obtain copies of freshly released movies. On their ‘topsites’ they share material with fairly close contacts for their own entertainment, usually along with strict instructions not to leak material to the outside world.
By now, everyone knows that the ‘Scene’ is just as leaky as the movie distribution model Hollywood would also like to protect, and within minutes their releases have begun to appear on peer-to-peer networks, especially BitTorrent. For those in the ‘Scene’ this is generally a huge disappointment. For millions of regular file-sharers, it’s a dream come true.
However, increasingly over the last few years, big movie releases have completely bypassed the usual routes to the Internet. In 2005, Star Wars Episode III appeared on the Internet to a fairly surprised ‘Scene’, which led to numerous groups ‘rebranding’ the release as their own, a ‘crime’ usually reserved for those lower down the pecking order.
And who can forget Wolverine? The leak of this unfinished ‘Workprint’ copy generated hundreds of mainstream news headlines. Did it come from the ‘Scene’? Absolutely not. It was leaked straight to the general Internet, bypassing the well-worn structure of the so-called ‘piracy pyramid’ altogether.
This phenomenon has been increasing rapidly, with some normally staunchly pro-Scene news outlets having to admit that times are changing. VCDQuality, a site which for years has been dedicated to reporting how quickly the ‘Scene’ releases movies onto the Internet, recently announced a significant change. They would now begin reporting when the new breed of releasers are first to introduce new movies to the Internet.
After all this time, the dedicated P2P release groups had finally been acknowledged. As can be seen here, their achievement list is growing with big movies and big releases. From Cams, through Telesyncs to DVD Screeners, it seems no format is escaping attention.
Following on from VCDQuality’s decision, a couple of weeks ago P2PElite was quietly launched. Its admin, KoOlWaReZ, told us that the site was designed and created to provide a home, profile and a central location for P2P release groups to get feedback, ratings, and interaction with the public on their releases.
While the site is still in development, the suggestion that release groups could interact with their audience is a major departure from the hide-away attitude demonstrated by ‘Scene’ groups.
Nevertheless, groups are indeed supporting the project. Among others, PrisM, iMAGiNE, Rx, FLAWL3SS, KiNGDOM, Noir, MAGNET and 420Demons (soon to be known as THC) are participating, names which will be familiar to huge numbers of BitTorrent users.
For Scene groups, leaks to BitTorrent and the wider Internet are the last thing they want. For the new wave of P2P release groups such as the above, this is the main aim.
TorrentFreak has managed to interview some Scene release group members before, so when we had the opportunity to speak with some straight-to-BitTorrent releasers, we jumped at the chance.
In the next part of this series we’ll look at the P2P release scene a little closer and chat with a couple of BitTorrent release groups to see what makes them tick.
Article from: TorrentFreak.
Peter Sunde Banned From Operating The Pirate Bay
Directly or indirectly, The Pirate Bay and its ‘founders’ have been involved in a dozen court cases in the past years, most notably the trial in which four people associated with the site were sentenced to one year in jail and hefty fines.
Despite this unfavorable verdict, which will be appealed later this year, the site itself remains online aside from some incidental hosting issues. To change this course, Hollywood movie studios have been going after the alleged operators of the site in court, and not without success.
In May this year, the Swedish Court of Appeals confirmed an earlier judgement by the District Court, prohibiting two of the site’s founding members – Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij – from operating the site. Failure to comply with the court’s decision will result in fines of 500,000 kronor (~$70,000) each.
Today, The Pirate Bay’s former spokesperson Peter Sunde was added to this list by the District Stockholm Court and now faces the same fine as his former colleagues for non-compliance.
It is doubtful that this latest decision will have any impact on The Pirate Bay’s operation. Similar to Fredrik and Gottfrid, Peter has previously stated that he is no longer involved with the site. Even more so, in the past Peter only acted as a spokesperson, he was never in charge of technical operations.
Peter Sunde confirmed this stance to TorrentFreak today, and noted that he was surprised by the ruling of the District Court.
“The interesting thing with the ruling is that the Swedish Court feels that they can judge me even though I do not live in Sweden and neither is the system [TPB],” Sunde said.
Indeed, all of the three people who are now banned from operating the site no longer live in Sweden. This also complicates the enforcement of the rulings since it is pretty much impossible to check whether or not Peter, Fredrik and Gottfrid are complying with their demands.
Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak that he will appeal the decision of the District Court. However, this appeal will be most likely scheduled after the appeal of The Pirate Bay trial this autumn so it may already be irrelevant by then.
“I’ve already appealed the decision, so it will have no effect anyhow. The new court case [appeal of The Pirate Bay trial] is coming up even before this will be in appeal…” Sunde said. Until then, Sunde continues to work full-time on his social payment startup Flattr.
Meanwhile, The Pirate Bay is serving torrents to millions of people every day.
Article from: TorrentFreak.
UFC Subpoenas Streaming Sites To Track Down Uploader
Since the start of this year, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) have been warning that they are prepared for a very tough fight indeed – and one in which they hope to knockout Internet piracy of their PPV events.
After shutting down Rage-Streams.net earlier this year, the UFC implied they would start going after those that consume streams too, an unlikely scenario and one that has failed to bear fruit thus far. But there are still plenty of providers – uploaders – and on them, UFC President Dana White made his position clear.
“We are committed to standing toe-to-toe with anyone trying to illegally broadcast or stream UFC events,” said the UFC mouthpiece earlier this month when noting that the company had reached 500 settlements with infringers in 2 years.
Earlier, UFC general legal counsel Lawrence Epstein warned that the mixed-martial arts outfit might even subpoena sites in order to gain the IP-addresses of people who were illegally uploading UFC events. The company has now made good on its threats.
UFC parent company Zuffa, which claims to be the largest provider of Pay-Per-View content in the world, just announced that it has subpoenaed two hugely popular streaming video sites, Justin.tv and Ustream.tv. With this legal action they hope to force the companies to reveal the identity of a user who uploaded two UFC events earlier this year.
The UFC say that on January 2, 2010, more than 36,000 people watched an illegal streaming video feed of UFC 108 which was being uploaded from a single IP address. On February 21, 2010, the very same IP address uploaded UFC 110 which was viewed by a claimed 78,000 individuals.
“I can’t wait to go after the thieves that are stealing our content,” said White. “This is a fight we will not lose.”
Zuffa say that once Justin.tv and Ustream.tv hand over the identity of the uploader, they will take civil copyright action against them.
MMA fans gave the news a mixed reception, with some noting that being a fan isn’t a right and ‘stealing’ events is simply wrong. Others felt that accepting a level of piracy is a good way to get more exposure.
“The UFC has had 15 pay-per-view event in the past year. Zuffa LLC is making a killing on PPVs and frustrating fans who simply cannot afford them. Hence, the piracy problem,” wrote a contributor to MMA blog, MMAJunkie.
“MMA is approaching a saturation point and won’t be able reach the next plateau of popularity until live UFC shows are easily accessible to the average viewer. You can’t fight the Internet – even if you are in the right. The UFC needs to adapt and evolve in the way it delivers content to the consumer and take a short-term loss for a long-term gain.”
In 2009, the UFC banked $350 million in PPV revenue.
Article from: TorrentFreak.
Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
This week there are four newcomers including the special p2p release of The Yes Men Fix The World. The Ghost Writer is the most downloaded movie on BitTorrent this week.
The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.
RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.
Week ending July 25, 2010 Ranking (last week) Movie Rating / Trailer torrentfreak.com 1 (4) The Ghost Writer 7.8 / trailer 2 (…) Operation Endgame 6.6 / trailer 3 (…) Inception (CAM) 9.3 / trailer 4 (…) Diary of a Wimpy Kid 6.1 / trailer 5 (1) Clash Of The Titans 6.0 / trailer 6 (…) The Yes Men Fix The World 7.5 / trailer 7 (2) Death At A Funeral 4.8 / trailer 8 (7) The A-Team (R5) 7.5 / trailer 9 (3) Repo Men 6.2 / trailer 10 (10) The Bounty Hunter 5.1 / trailerArticle from: TorrentFreak.
Mass BitTorrent Lawsuits Now Target Private Trackers
Mass lawsuits against alleged file-sharers are spreading like a plague of locusts from Europe over to the United States. By now, their action is clear. Gather IP address evidence against as many alleged file-sharers as possible and take legal action in order to discover their names and addresses. Once those details are learned, pressure the recipient by post with threatening financial ruination unless an early settlement of a few hundred dollars up to a couple of thousand is forthcoming.
While lawyers in Germany and the UK (ACS:Law, Davenport Lyons and now Gallant MacMillan) have been doing most of the pioneering work for this business model, it is the US Copyright Group and its pursuit of Hurt Locker file-sharers that has grabbed most of the headlines.
What all these lawyers have in common, is that none of them reveal where their evidence has been gathered from and since no cases have ever gone to court – that’s none, zero, nada – then no one has ever forced them to. From our dealings with specific and verified UK cases and from the scale of the US operation, it is fairly clear that the IP addresses used have been collated from public trackers.
Now it appears that adult movie company Lucas Entertainment have bucked the trend.
“You only have to conduct a quick Google search to see the rampant piracy all over the internet,” says Lucas Entertainment President/CEO Michael Lucas. “I am always surprised that users would deal with torrent sites and all the hassle that requires instead of streaming through LucasEntertainment.com, but I guess there are many people out there who have endless patience. We appreciate our fans wherever they are but business is business and we have to make some money off our content.”
To this end, not only has the company announced the filing of a lawsuit in Texas Northern District Court on July 19 which targets 65 defendants, but they have also uniquely revealed that they tracked the ‘John Does’ on a private BitTorrent tracker.
Although fairly niche when compared to the wide appeal of say, The Pirate Bay, Gay-Torrents.net (GT) is still a very big tracker. In existence since 2001 with more than 235,000 members, its users have now become the latest target in these lucrative ‘pay or else’ schemes. Copyright owners and lawyers want money from file-sharers, no matter where they live or what material they choose to obtain. And Lucas Entertainment are no different, although they are yet to announce exactly how much money they want.
This case should be of unique and special interest to all private tracker users because it raises some very interesting questions. GT, like all private sites, is a members only venue. This means that either Mr Lucas in person (or potentially one of his agents) is an active member of GT and must have actively participated in swarms.
Of course, this is true of public trackers too, but private trackers keep records – lots of them – so discovering the account connected with that can prove a trivial process. If it’s discovered that the account in question has been uploading, the litigation waters could get muddied significantly. In regular cases against file-sharers only anti-piracy groups carry evidence. Evidence on private trackers cuts both ways.
TorrentFreak spoke with an admin at GT who told us that they “would be somewhat displeased with any Member who sought to make a profit or take legal advantage of his torrenting activities via GT.”
That said, we are told that other GT members are indeed connected with the movie industry.
“Some GT Members are heavily involved in the same industry as Mr Lucas and also participate in filesharing because it is recognised that such activities are to their mutual benefit as movie producer, consumer and, in full agreement with GT and with our collaboration, as free advertiser and distributor,” TorrentFreak was told.
“The latter agreement would include a term that we advertise their new title and ban new productions for a specific period of time following release in order to encourage sales. Rather strangely some producers such as Lucas Entertainment appear to prefer a more litigious route rather than one of mutual cooperation,” explained a GT admin.
Nevertheless, more formal agreements aside, GT appears to be a somewhat considerate tracker.
“As a general courtesy to ALL studios (including our producer-Membership and their future uploads), we already impose a blanket ban on ALL pre-release titles regardless of Membership with GT. Our aim is to work in cooperation with the industry, but if the recent stories of further litigation are well-founded it appears some poorly advised studios stubbornly choose to view our Membership as common thieves rather than with respect as potential customers, and as free advertisers and distributors,” the admin concludes.
GT told TorrentFreak that they lay the blame for these lawsuits firmly at the door of outdated copyright laws applied to 21st century life, business and technology.
“Quite simply, governments and businesses worldwide need to catch up but we fear ACTA (the impending Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) will apply 20th century principles and shall deter innovation and quash new business models otherwise fit for modern societies.”
In the meantime copyright holders are making the best of it. Show them the money.
Article from: TorrentFreak.
Tech News Sites Tout Misleading BitTorrent Piracy Study
Every so often a new study surfaces that attempts to describe the BitTorrent landscape. Yesterday a study by the Internet Commerce Security Laboratory (ICSL) was publicized (pdf) and the researchers found that only 0.3% of all torrents were confirmed legal. Good enough for a catchy headline, but how accurate is the study really?
Unfortunately, the results of these type of studies are pushed by anti-piracy outfits and taken for granted by outsiders, even by respected news outlets on the Internet such as Ars Technica and ZDNet. In this case their reporters were completely taken in by the report.
Just a few minutes into reading the study we were shaking our heads here at the TorrentFreak headquarters. Mistake after mistake is made in the report and conclusions are drawn based on painfully inaccurate data and methodologies. We’ll lay out the most critical errors below, which represent just the tip of the iceberg.
The study aims to answer four questions. We will state each question and indicate what’s wrong with the answers.
1. How many files are shared using BitTorrent and what are the categories of shared files?ICSL claims that there are slightly more than a million torrent files to be found online, according to data obtained from 17 BitTorrent trackers this spring. They further come up with an overview of categories where applications account for 2.3% of all torrents, while movies and TV-shows are good for more than 70%.
Both conclusions are horribly wrong.
We’re not sure how the researchers came up with the one million torrents because the OpenBitTorrent tracker, which is included in their sample, reports it has 2,5 million torrents alone. In addition, sites such as isoHunt index over 5 million unique torrents. Needless to say, ICSL’s data collection methods are far from accurate.
An even bigger flaw is found in the categorization process. The categories are not based on the entire set of torrents, but only on the most-seeded ones, which heavily skews the data. Books and applications generally have a lower seed count than movie and TV-shows which means that they are underrepresented in the category overview.
2. At a given point in time, how much sharing of files is actually occurring using BitTorrent?“For the trackers that we scraped, we recorded a minimum of 117,420,061 current seeds. This value is calculated by determining the highest available seeder count for each torrent from any tracker that was scraped,” the researchers answer in their report.
Again this is figure is bogus, but this time it’s wrong on the other end of the scale. As will become clear later in our analysis, the researchers have made a critical mistake by including various trackers that report false seed counts. We had to chuckle when we saw 2-year-old torrents with more than a million seeders in their report. The real seed count at any given time lies between 10 and 20 million.
3. For each shared file, how many times has it been shared in total?Here’s where the researchers make total fools out of themselves. In their answer to the question they refer to a table of the top 10 most seeded torrents. As noted before, the most seeded file was uploaded nearly two years ago (The Incredible Hulk) and has a massive 1,112,628 seeders. The torrent in 10th place is not doing bad either with 277,043 seeds. All false data.
Top 10 of Fake Torrents?
We’re not sure where these numbers originate from but the best seeded torrent at the moment only has 13,739 seeders, that’s 1% of what the study reports. Also, the fact that the release is nearly two years old should have sounded some alarm bells. It appears that the researchers have pulled data from a bogus tracker, and it wouldn’t be a big surprise if all the torrents in their top 10 are actually fake.
4. Overall, what is the number and percentage of shared files which are infringing, both by number of files and total downloads?Here the researchers conclude that 97.9% of all files on BitTorrent are copyright infringing, and only 0.3% confirmed ‘legal’. Based on our previous conclusions it is hard to believe that these figures are even remotely accurate, and they aren’t. There are too many flaws in the methodology to list here, but for one this statistic is grossly inaccurate because it’s based on the most popular files, of which many are fake.
The researchers should have at least tried to determine the percentage of infringing files on their whole (inaccurate) dataset instead of the most seeded ones (of which many are fake). We’re not trying to argue that the majority of the torrents are legit, but the selection of torrents and sources is extremely biased towards discovering copyright infringing torrents.
To back this up, we only have to take a look at isoHunt. According to isoHunt their site indexes 5,451,959 unique torrent files, and 85,457 of these come from Jamendo, a site that publishes only Creative Commons licensed music. So that’s already 1.5% torrents that can be shared legally, without mentioning any Linux distros.
Bottom line is that this ‘Academic’ paper is one of the most inaccurate reports we’ve seen thus far, and the mainstream tech media either didn’t spend long reading the report or simply didn’t have the specialist knowledge to read the results and come to their own conclusions. Even worse, the Australian anti-piracy outfit AFACT will probably use this ‘credible’ report in court to convince the court that the local ISP iiNet responsible for the copyright infringements of its customers.
Let’s hope that Ars and others will update their reports accordingly.
Update: They did..!
We’ve contacted Paul Watters, one of the researchers, for a comment but haven’t heard back from him yet.
Update: Watters replied to me, stating that he stands by his findings. He ignored all questions and offered to send a copy of a statistics manual instead. Since I taught statistics and research methods to PhD students myself, I kindly declined his offer.
Article from: TorrentFreak.
‘Yes Men’ Use BitTorrent To Avoid Censorship
With millions of daily users BitTorrent is a great outlet for filmmakers to promote their work, but there are more advantages to this 21st century distribution platform. After their first film turned into a huge success, The Yes Men don’t have to worry too much about promotion. However, it is still much-needed to avoid censorship from governments and corporations and to raise funds for future endeavors.
In 2009 The Yes Men hijacked a United States Chamber of Commerce press conference, declaring a U-turn on their climate change policy. In a response to this “identity correction” the Chamber filed a lawsuit against the duo, claiming that they misled the public. Due to this legal battle no TV-station wants to take the risk to run some of the most controversial material, so The Yes Men took matters into their own hands by releasing an updated P2P-edition of their latest film today.
In addition to avoiding censorship, The Yes Men are looking for donations to fund their upcoming projects. This is where the BitTorrent-powered distribution platform VODO comes in. With free promotion from uTorrent, Limewire and a variety of prominent torrent sites including The Pirate Bay and EZTV, this release will instantly have an audience of millions of downloaders.
To find out more about their motivation to get the film out on BitTorrent and to find out whether they were also this excited about BitTorrent when their first film was pirated by more than a million people, we caught up with Mike Bonanno, one half of The Yes Men.
“There are a few reasons why we chose BitTorrent. First off, it’s a way to avoid censorship,” Mike Bonanno told TorrentFreak. “This version includes video of an action against the US Chamber of Commerce that we are being sued for. No commercial outlets will touch it. We had a TV show scheduled on Planet Green and their lawyers nearly wet themselves when they heard we wanted to use footage of us making political mince-meant out of the largest lobbying organization in the world.”
Yes Men Fix the World
“It’s unlikely that anyone would distribute this material before we get out of court,” Bonanno continued. “But we don’t want them to win a de-facto censorship case, so P2P is a great workaround. Another reason we are doing this is because this is the way people see movies these days, and we made this movie for people to see it. We would love it if people bought our DVD, but we also want people who don’t do that to see it. And last of all: we do hope to generate some donations: we are broke and there are not so many funders for our new project, especially given that they are all spooked by lawsuits, no matter how stupid!”
Although the benefits of BitTorrent are clear in this case, The Yes Men’s previous film was also pirated by more than a million people. When we asked Mike Bonanno how he felt about this we found out that he’s more upset about the stranglehold that the ‘copyright mafia’ puts on indie productions than the people who grab a copy of their movie on BitTorrent.
“It’s great that people are watching our films! We are very happy that they are getting seen. But that having been said, we do wish that a few more people were paying for it. We borrowed a shit-load of money from friends to make our latest movie and we still can’t pay them back. Also, the way the industry is set up, if you want your stuff on TV or delivered through any official channels you have to spend a massive amount of money clearing rights and paying for legal stuff and that is just silly.”
“For us to get our ‘errors and omissions insurance’ required for any distributor to take it, we had to clear the rights on all sorts of stuff we should not really have had to… including music written in the 17th century, which apparently because of some kind of law in Austria was not public domain according to the interpretation of insurance industry lawyers! Anyway, that’s just one example… so what happens as a film maker – especially a documentary maker – is that in today’s market we are fucked.”
“Because to get it on TV we still need to act like we have deep pockets and can pay for rights for all sorts of shit, but then with the collapse of the indy film market distributors won’t pay for it. And of course most people file-share it rather than pay for it. So yeah, we are happy that people are watching it but not so happy that we are financially screwed! But we also see that it’s the system that is screwing us: we are not blaming the pirates, we are blaming casino capitalism!”
This comment from Bonanno led us to ask the question whether The Yes Men would ever consider exposing the ‘copyright mafia’ and anti-piracy groups. These outfits have turned copyright into a cash cow while pretending to protect the rights of artists, something we address here on TorrentFreak every week. As it turns out, The Yes Men are siding with us in this regard.
“I think in some ways most of our work is about targeting ideas about the rule of private property… so this is related,” Bonanno said. “Our first four years as The Yes Men was dedicated to attacking the World Trade Organization, which has historically supported the idea of proprietary media. Overall, I think that in some ways everything today, every major issue facing us can be seen through the lens of what role it plays in the commons… or lack thereof, as many a government and corporation would have it.”
“If copyright was actually working the way it was supposed to, and protecting the authors that would be great. But that’s not how it works anymore – it just protects money; whoever has the most of it. And usually that means that the authors are fucked anyway!”
The Peer-to-Peer edition of The Yes Men Fix The World is now available for free on VODO. To spread their knowledge The Yes Men have started The Yes Lab, which is also worth checking out. Lastly, don’t forget to donate a few bucks if you like what you see.
‘Yes Men’ Clip that leaked Earlier (audience camera)
Article from: TorrentFreak.
Busted Movie Site Pleads For Cash To Fight Feds
By now, you know the background. Last month “Operation In Our Sites” targeted nine domains connected to the offering of first-run movies without consent from the copyright holders.
The authorities moved to seize several domains including TVShack.net, Movies-Links.TV, FilesPump.com, Now-Movies.com, PlanetMoviez.com, ThePirateCity.org and ZML.com. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) also seized assets from 15 bank, PayPal, investment and advertising accounts.
The operators of two other domains were also targeted – NinjaVideo.net and NinjaThis.net. According to authorities the site had been subjected to a months-long operation. This is something TorrentFreak can confirm. Following a tipoff from a very reliable source, we informed NinjaVideo months ago that they were being watched and their hardware was being interfered with. It’s almost certain that they were powerless to do anything about it.
Now, the charismatic and somewhat larger-than-life leader of NinjaVideo, a young woman by the name of Phara, has returned to the spotlight. Never one to understate an issue, Phara is known for her forceful leadership style and colorful, often dramatic writing on various site issues from the small, to the very large.
The seriousness of the situation she currently finds herself, however, is off the scale.
“We need you. Our lives, our very freedom depends on this. We can’t do it alone,” pleads Phara. “We have nothing. Nothing at all. They took… everything.”
“Precedents are being made upon our heads. Never before has a site like ours been targeted in this way. We ask you… if you are vested in this case, this landmark case on the future of Internet Sharing and Internet Rights, that you speak to your friends, your family, your co-workers, your bosses,” she continues.
The gravity of the situation is clear. There can be little doubt that the U.S. Government will seek to make a very large example of NinjaVideo’s operators – a likelihood which doesn’t escape Phara. To this end she is calling for heavyweight help.
“Perhaps you are affiliated with the ACLU, Google, Youtube, MegaUpload, Rapidshare, The Pirate Parties around the world. Perhaps you are financially comfortable and you feel passionately about the issue at hand. We need… NEED… legal sponsorship in addition to legal donation,” she pleads.
“Perhaps the future of your own site is at risk and it is this case that will put it in the crosshairs of the next raid. Perhaps it will be you who will see your home, dear lord, your home, ripped apart by THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY.”
NinjaVideo was a free resource and never took money from its users but due to the unbelievably difficult situation its operators now find themselves in, pleas are now being issued for people to donate to the site’s fighting fund.
“We are up against the Federal Government of the United States. They are petrifying. PETRIFYING,” concludes Phrara. “And they are backed by Hollywood. And they have chosen us to be an example. I think you understand how much money is on the other side.”
Lots. Lots and lots of money. There can be little doubt about that. Phara fears the worst.
“They want to cage us. They most likely will,” she warns ominously.
“Please don’t let them. All it takes is $1 from each of you.”
In return for large donations – four digits or more – Ninja are offering benefactors a prominent position “behind the scenes”, presumably connected with defense. What these positions entail exactly remains to be seen.
“Your prayers, your posts, your words, your art… your support in general is priceless. Unfortunately, in the world we live in, it will be your money that gives us a fighting chance. The former gives us the strength to close our eyes and take it one breath at a time, the latter gives us the opportunity to take that breath outside of a prison cell,” Phara concludes.
“We love you, NinjaVideo. We always will.”
Those who wish to contribute to the NinjaVideo fighting fund can do so via this page.
Article from: TorrentFreak.
RapidShare Scores Another Win Against Movie Studio
Like most file-hosting services, RapidShare hosts a wide range of movies, music and software files that are distributed without the consent of the rightsholders. This situation has caused the company to be dragged to court on multiple occasions, but the file-hoster has come out the winner several times already.
In May this year, the United States District Court of California ruled that RapidShare is not guilty of copyright infringement. In a hearing closer to home for the Swiss company, a German court ruled in the same month that RapidShare cannot be held not liable for acts of copyright infringement committed by its users.
In a related case in Germany against the movie studio Capelight Pictures, RapidShare has booked another success after a lower court initially ruled against the file-hoster last year. RapidShare successfully appealed against a preliminary injunction granted by the Düsseldorf Regional Court, and the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf has now reversed the decision.
The dispute between Capelight Pictures and the file-hoster dealt with the question of whether RapidShare had undertaken all reasonable measures to counter the illegal distribution of one of the films owned by the movie outfit in Germany. While the lower court ruled RapidShare did not, the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf overturned this decision.
“The ruling is a further step in the right direction,” sad RapidShare lawyer Daniel Raimer. “The previously common practice of copyright holders [suing] RapidShare on the off-chance there might be something to be gained from it, misunderstanding the realities it is operating within and showing contempt for its business model, will no longer bear fruit. The newest court rulings in Germany and the USA indicate this very clearly.“
Christian Schmid, founder and CEO of RapidShare, commented: “We are also pleased with the ruling because it is connected to a claim for compensation of costs. Copyright holders should therefore think very carefully in future about whether they wouldn’t prefer to save themselves some time and above all the expense of suing RapidShare for something for which the company cannot be held liable.“
Together with the positive outcomes from the other court cases this year, RapidShare has less to worry about on the legal front in the future. The verdicts are undoubtedly a major victory for RapidShare, and they will also reflect positively on other file-hosters and even torrent sites. In fact, many of the arguments used by the Court also hold for the average torrent site, as long as they stay away from other means of facilitating copyright infringement.
Article from: TorrentFreak.
Anti-Piracy Group Accused Of Blackmailing Teen File-Sharers
Today’s wars, no matter where they are fought or who is fighting them, are increasingly exposed to public scrutiny. While there are accepted guidelines for engaging in battle to which conventional and accountable forces must adhere, there are plenty of exceptions to these rules and many transgressions go on undiscovered.
In the ongoing Internet conflict between file-sharers and pro-copyright groups, there are many fighting fronts. While much diplomatic pressure is exerted to create new laws and tighten up existing ones, other elements are using those laws to take down file-sharing sites and threaten ISPs. On the Internet itself, anti-piracy groups work largely covertly, spying on users and file-sharing sites and services alike, gathering intelligence on a daily basis.
Since it is largely unseen, this type of anti-piracy activity remains somewhat of a mystery. How do the movie and music industries gain access to the most exclusive private trackers and FTP sites? How do they gather evidence on both site operators and site content for months without being detected? Perhaps of even more interest is how they manage to gather personal information on users of those sites.
Antipiratbyrån (APB) regularly make the pages of TorrentFreak since it is one of the most active online anti-piracy groups. It has been effective in its investigations against individual file-sharers and has managed to infiltrate a number of exclusive piracy hangouts. How it did this has largely remained a mystery but according to a report from Sweden, some of that information is being obtained by old fashioned blackmail.
From a source who has previously worked in law enforcement and also in the private sector, news outlet Nyheter24 has now revealed that APB have been tracking down teenage file-sharers and threatening them with reprisals unless they snitch on their friends and hand over information on the sites they use.
Citing a situation which happened a few years ago, the source explains how APB received a tip that people were sharing files via a research institute FTP server. APB allegedly contacted a known file-sharing employee at the location and threatened the individual with reprisals unless they handed over information and helped with their investigation. APB subsequently used the employee’s login to access the server.
APB later threatened to take the case to court unless material on the FTP server was deleted. Fighting back, the research institute threatened to report APB for hacking. In the end a settlement between the two sides was reached in private and no further action was taken.
On a very similar theme, just recently Swedish prosecutor Björn Ericson announced that there would be no investigation into the activities of APB despite allegations that they had gained unauthorized access to another FTP server, this time in the ongoing ePhone case.
“There was not enough concrete information about a specific crime,” concluded Ericson.
While anti-piracy groups and copyright holders aren’t immune to the law, they do work to less strict guidelines than the police do when they conduct an inquiry into a criminal case. Their quest to manipulate individuals through fear is a common strategy.
Last year, representatives from several indie music labels infiltrated a private BitTorrent tracker with the aim of gathering information on both users and admins and using that data to force it to close down. One member, who had uploaded a lot of music to the site, was befriended by the infiltrators and over a period of several months was persuaded to part with sensitive information on site staff and other users. Armed with that information the label workers later revealed themselves to the site’s admin, along with a threat – close down or else. They quickly learned that two can play that game.
With assistance from moderators at other sites, the tracker’s staff used the huge amounts of data they held on the infiltrators, from email addresses through to several pages of IP addresses, to hunt down their adversaries on other sites. There they found the same users happily downloading movies, software and TV shows, along with plenty of incriminating forum posts and in one case, a home address. That address led to a phone number, which led to an unexpected late-night phone call.
Blackmail, it seems, can cut both ways.
Article from: TorrentFreak.
Police To Receive Evidence Against ‘Large Scale’ File-Sharers
While TorrentFreak tends to concentrate on the events surrounding the BitTorrent protocol, there are dozens of other ways to share files on the Internet.
One of those methods is known as Direct Connect, a hub-based ‘shared folder’ type system. Direct Connect hubs are more difficult to access than regular torrent sites but once in, users tend to share their entire collections, be they music or movie based. The index of all this material is shared between the users of the hub to show what is available and files can be accessed whenever the ‘owner’ of them is online. They can prove an absolute gold mine of data.
Unfortunately, as some users of Direct Connect in Sweden have discovered in recent months, proving large scale infringement against them is much easier than with BitTorrent. This has led to a number of arrests.
While Sweden has long been considered a relative hotbed for Direct Connect hubs, according to AIMR (Asociatia Industriei Muzicale din Romania) – Romania’s answer to the RIAA – their country is leading the world when it comes to Direct Connect.
According to information just released, this month parent group IFPI monitored a total of 913 active active hubs in Romania. In second place came Italy with 526, ahead of France, Russia, Hungary, Sweden, Finland and Poland. The United States came in at 10th place with just 143.
AIMR says that Romanian Direct Connect hubs have around 75,000 users at any one time, peaking to around 100,000 in the evenings and at the weekends. While these numbers may seems fairly low, the amounts being shared aren’t, with AIMR reporting that around 17,000 TB of data is being made available.
Since users generally only get hub access if they are prepared to offer media to the pool themselves, it means that nearly everyone is a significant provider of music and movies and therefore quite a big target for anti-piracy groups, especially when compared to BitTorrent users.
To this end, following an investigation in June, AIMR said it collected evidence against 40 ‘large scale’ users of Direct Connect hubs. In AIMR terms, this means people sharing more than 5,000 music tracks.
“In general, this means those who have shared more than 20 gigabytes of music, who have a constant presence online and are repeat users,” said AIMR’s Valeria Constantine in a statement.
“We identify them by IP address and then go to the police and each ISP to trace them to their homes. If it is proven that they uploaded music illegally then court proceedings can be initiated,” she added. “The whole process can take over a year.”
AIMR says it will send its evidence to the Fraud Investigation Service divisions of several police departments during July.
For those convicted of breaches of Art. 139, Legea Nr. 8/ 1996 (Article 139, Law no. 8 of 1996), there is a potential for harsh penalties – a maximum of 4 years in jail – but it’s unlikely anyone will be punished to that extent.
Last year saw the first case against a Romanian music file-sharer ending in the accused having to pay compensation of around $3,000 to AIMR. A second case this year ended in a similar manner.
AIMR hasn’t always successfully followed up on its anti-piracy warnings though. Following fears that The Pirate Bay might disappear after being bought by Hans Pandeya’s Global Gaming Factory, a complete copy of the site’s databases appeared online. BTArena created a clone of The Pirate Bay and was immediately threatened by AIMR with legal action. That site remains online today.
Article from: TorrentFreak.
Admins Of Oldest BitTorrent Site Face Criminal Charges
Founded in 2003, UK-based FileSoup was one of the original torrent sites. It outlived many of the sites that sprung up around the time and developed a great reputation and a warm community in the years that followed.
After years of operating the site without any noticeable trouble, in the summer of 2009 police and the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) conducted a raid on the home address of the site’s owner, known online as ‘TheGeeker’. Another raid was carried out around the same time on the property of fellow administrator ‘Snookered’. Both were arrested and taken in for questioning.
From the information that we received after the raids it became clear that the MPAA-funded anti-piracy group FACT had been the driving force behind the case, and that they were responsible for gathering the intelligence that led up to the arrests.
Similar to other cases in the UK, such as that against TV Links, it was not the police but the private anti-piracy group FACT who took charge of property seized from the Filesoup operators. As it turned out, the police themselves knew very little about the suspects and their alleged crimes.
This became clear when Geeker was questioned by the police after his arrest last year. In common with other FACT-run cases, the nature of BitTorrent proved difficult for law enforcement to grasp, with Geeker having to explain how everything worked – including what URLs and domain names are.
Now, nearly a year later, Geeker and a fellow administrator Snookered have been charged with conspiracy to infringe copyright for their role in the site. Notably, Filesoup is mainly a discussion board and although torrent files are linked on the site, it hasn’t operated a tracker for half a decade.
The full text as it appears on the charge sheet is as follows:
Between the 1.1.2003 and 1.9.2009 Stephan […} and George […} conspired together with others unknown to infringe copyright in a work communicated to the public in the course of a business namely the website ‘Filesoup’ knowing or having reason to believe that copyright was infringed.
Conspiracy to Infringe Copyright by Communicating the work to the public Contrary to Section 1 Criminal Law Act 1977
Both admins are currently out on bail but have to surrender to the custody of Taunton Deane Magistrates in Taunton, Somerset, during early August.
Geeker told TorrentFreak that he has been in contact with the same solicitors who successfully defended the admin of the OiNK BitTorrent site, who walked free earlier this year after a UK court cleared him of all charges. He can’t give out any more details on the case at the moment, but has promised to keep us updated as soon as he can.
Although OiNK and Filesoup are both BitTorrent sites, the charges are quite different. Instead of going for ‘conspiracy to defraud’ as with the case against OiNK admin Allan Ellis, the Filesoup operators are charged with copyright infringement offenses.
It appears that FACT has instructed the authorities to try a different approach this time around since Allan Ellis was not convicted. The most worrying part in this and other cases is that private anti-piracy organizations have so much control of the authorities, up to the point where they can keep seized goods in their possession.
Geeker is confident that he and his fellow admin have a strong case. He believes that, like Alan Ellis, he has never done anything wrong and hopes to convince the court of the same. To be continued.
Charge Sheet (large)
Article from: TorrentFreak.
Top 10 Most Pirated Movies on BitTorrent
This week there are two newcomers in the top 10 and one returnee. Clash Of The Titans is the most downloaded movie on BitTorrent again this week.
The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are DVDrips unless stated otherwise.
RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.
Week ending July 18, 2010 Ranking (last week) Movie Rating / Trailer torrentfreak.com 1 (1) Clash Of The Titans 6.0 / trailer 2 (…) Death At A Funeral 4.8 / trailer 3 (2) Repo Men 6.2 / trailer 4 (…) The Ghost Writer 7.8 / trailer 5 (5) The Karate Kid 5.8 / trailer 6 (3) The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (TS) 4.3 / trailer 7 (4) The A-Team (R5) 7.5 / trailer 8 (9) Green Zone 7.2 / trailer 9 (6) Hot Tub Time Machine (R5) 7.2 / trailer 10 (back) The Bounty Hunter 5.1 / trailerArticle from: TorrentFreak.