TorrentFreak

The Winnipeg-based law firm Thompson Dorfman Sweatman LLP has put in offers to acquire several of the largest BitTorrent sites behalf of an unnamed client, TorrentFreak has learned. Although the true source behind the offers has not been officially confirmed, all leads point to a familiar name.

With millions of visitors day, the leading BitTorrent sites are valuable properties. Although none of the big sites have been sold publicly, most of them are easily worth a million dollars.

In recent history quite a few medium-sized torrent sites have changed owners, but these were all deals done within the torrent community, none were conducted in the open.

The first time that an outsider went public with plans to buy a torrent site was last year when Global Gaming Factory (GGF) made a $7.8 million offer for The Pirate Bay, and a $25 million offer to buy Mininova. GGF planned to legalize the sites and turn them into media portals where movies and music would be sold with approval from copyright holders.

Most readers probably recall that the deals with the two largest torrent sites at the time didn’t go through due to funding issues. However, last month GGF CEO Hans Pandeya popped up again, this time with an offer for the largest semi-private BitTorrent community Demonoid. Apparently, he had not yet abandoned his plans.

Demonoid’s owner told TorrentFreak that he was not interested in anything GGF had to offer, so Pandeya had to target other sites to carry out his plans. Interestingly enough, a few days after Demonoid rejected Pandeya’s offer, the Canadian law firm Thompson Dorfman Sweatman LLP contacted several other larger torrent sites with similar offers.

In their correspondence the solicitors claim to be working for a U.S. based corporation that is interested in acquiring the assets of the sites in question. The identity of the potential buyer is not disclosed, but considering the timing it wouldn’t be strange if it turned out to be GGF CEO Hans Pandeya.

Torrent sites don’t often get offers from external parties, except the ones from GGF we discussed above. If Pandeya is indeed behind the offer, it would make sense for him to make his approach using the cover of a law firm due to the bad reputation he has built up among torrent site owners.

The torrent sites that have been approached prefer not to be named, but they are among the most visited on the Internet, which is in line with Pandeya’s plans. The only thing that’s different this time is the money being offered. Unlike the millions of dollars that were thrown around previously, the current offers are at the lower end of the scale.

None of the torrent sites that were contacted are interested in selling, so it is likely that we might never know the truth about the mysterious buyer or if he has connections to GGF.

Hans Pandeya was contacted for a comment, but didn’t want to respond on the record.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Yesterday, police in 14 countries around Europe coordinated in raids against so-called Warez Scene topsites. Sweden, The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, Great Britain, Czech Republic and Hungary all saw action. With the help of Scene insiders and other sources, today we try to piece together what happened, including which sites were hit and which ones got away.

Twenty-four hours ago brought the news that a huge police operation right across Europe had reached its climax.

Officers in 14 countries coordinated to carry out multiple searches in an attempt to inflict serious damage on the so-called Warez Scene, the shadowy network of Internet based servers and individuals who deal in large quantities of pirated music, movies and software.

Yesterday nearly all information had come from either the authorities, police or staff at datacenters, notably Sweden’s PRQ, but since then TorrentFreak sources with varying levels of inside information have been trying to put us in the picture.

So, keeping in mind that reporting on the Scene is a black art, that we’ve had to hold some information back to protect certain individuals and keep our sources happy, and redact here and there to protect others, here are our findings thus far.

“In pretty much all of the cases the police just walked into the datacenters, proceeded with warrants, more or less unplugged the boxes and left with them,” one source told us. “They knew very well exactly what they were looking for and this was a highly coordinated attack.”

While there were reports of individuals having been taken in for questioning yesterday, for an operation of this size those numbers seem unusually low. This is due to the operation targeting only ‘topsites’ – no specific release groups or their members appear to have been the focus of the action. It’s believed that some siteops weren’t so lucky.

We know that the raids were carried out at the behest of the Belgian authorities and two sources have told us that it is suspected that a Scene group in Belgium had been infiltrated a long time ago. Indeed, the authorities over there say that this operation had been two years in the making.

Another source is pointing the finger squarely at a siteop with poor security, but whatever the reasons, these sites are now in disarray.

As of last night, all the following Scene sites were down either because they were successfully targeted in the raids or as a precautionary measure. The first three are said to be very highly ranked and three of the top four were almost certainly busted.

1. BAR – Sweden.

2. LOST – Czech Republic

3. [name redacted] – major site in The Netherlands

4. SC – Sweden / Poland

5. Affiliated site in Eastern Europe believed safe, but down.

6. [porn section of a sitering, redacted] – Sweden

Based on the information we’re being provided with, certain sites probably survived due to the techniques they employed to thwart this kind of an attack. In other cases perhaps the police didn’t quite get it right. We can’t be more specific.

Sources inform TorrentFreak that Sweden’s BAR was one of the four most important 0day sites. Since it went down yesterday, another significant southern European site in that top four has announced it has closed its operations for good.

In respect of the Czech operation, Jan Podhajsky of the Czech Pirate Party told us that a raid was carried out on a dormitory at the Czech Technical University in Prague. This is not the first time police have carried out an operation in this location – Podhajsky told us that raids against hackers have been going on there since the late 90s.

It seems that the impact of this large, Europe-wide operation will be significant, at least for the near future.

“Many groups and especially server operators are once again scared shitless,” a source told us. “We can probably expect more ‘resignations’ in the following days.”

Update: We’ve received information which suggests that a topsite, possibly the main one in the UK, was busted yesterday. There are unconfirmed reports that another is also down, but that could be just as a precaution. Two Scene groups have been reported to us as badly affected by the topsite raids but until we can confirm, we won’t be naming them.

Anyone with further information can contact us in confidence via tips@torrentfreak.com

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Police in up to 14 countries around Europe have coordinated to carry out raids against suspected file-sharing servers this morning. Locations in The Netherlands, Czech Republic and Hungary were targeted but Sweden appears to have borne the brunt of the action. Seven locations including PRQ, which hosts WikiLeaks, have been raided.

This morning news is coming in which indicates that very significant raids against illicit file-sharing are taking place in locations across Europe.

Police in up to 14 European countries are said to be involved in an operation, said to be in the planning for two years, targeting the Warez Scene, the network of individuals and servers at the top of the so-called ‘Piracy Pyramid’.

Details are scarce at the moment, but it is believed that at the behest of Belgian authorities, raids have gone ahead in The Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Germany, Great Britain, Czech Republic, Hungary and Sweden.

Not unusually, Sweden appears to have borne the brunt of the activity with a total of seven locations raided including Stockholm, Malmö, Umeå, Eskilstuna and Solna.

Armed with IP addresses, this morning police officers turned up at the Solna premises of PRQ, the company that in part hosts WikiLeaks.There is no suggestion that the controversial whistle-blowing site is connected to the operation.

“At 9:00 this morning, five policemen were here,” explained PRQ’s Mikael Viberg. “They were interested in who were using two IP addresses from 2009 and onwards. We have no records of our clients but we’re handing over the e-mail addresses for those behind the IPs. However, it’s rare that our clients have mail addresses that are traceable.”

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Update: Swedish Prosecutor Frederick Ingblad told Swedish news outlet Expressen.se, “I can confirm that [this operation] is not about Wikileaks.”

Update 2: Thus far, four people are said to be being questioned on suspicion of breaching copyright law. Servers and computers have been seized in Sweden.

Update 3:Police raided the Umeå University.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Last month, outspoken manager of U2 Paul McGuinness penned a piece titled "How to Save The Music Industry". Among other things, McGuinness suggested that ISPs were unlikely to help the music industry in their battle against illegal file-sharing since they are the ones benefiting from the "multi-billion dollar bonanza" it has generated. UK ISP Entanet are not happy.

Beginning with a recollection of 19th-century composer Ernest Bourget’s dismay at hearing an orchestra playing one of his own compositions in a restaurant without permission (and subsequently leaving without paying his bill in retaliation), it was a typical and now regular anti-filesharing piece from McGuinness.

We are living in an era when “free” is decimating the music industry, but while those who make our music are having the lifeblood sucked from them, others are profiting handsomely, the U2 manager argues.

“Yet for the world’s internet service providers, bloated by years of broadband growth, ‘free music’ has become a multi-billion dollar bonanza,” says McGuinness.

Internet service provider Entanet took exception to his comments and last night responded. After earlier telling Bono to “Stick To Singing“, they are now suggesting that McGuinness should stick to what he knows best – the music.

“Considering Mr. McGuinness proudly informs us he has been debating on this issue for two years, he seems to totally misunderstand the reasons behind broadband customers’ demand for better broadband speeds and equally doesn’t understand the current facilities available on the Internet,” writes Entanet’s head of marketing, Darren Farnden.

Farnden argues that most broadband customers want faster speeds in order to enjoy better performance on legal services such as online gaming, YouTube, iPlayer, iTunes and VoIP, and slams McGuinness for suggesting people just want to pirate more efficiently.

“It is simply naive to suggest that customers’ desire for faster broadband and more bandwidth is driven solely by a desire to cheat music rights holders out of their royalties through illegal file sharing,” said Farnden.

“Furthermore, without legal services such as iTunes music sales would undeniably decrease. Does Mr. McGuinness want to close down this distribution model that has proven to contribute positively to music sales? Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face!”

McGuinness further provokes ISPs by stating, as if they are somehow responsible for the actions of others, that “their free-music bonanza has got to stop”. This can be achieved, he says, by ISPs entering into commercial partnerships to offer unlimited music via streaming services and “taking proportionate responsible steps” to stop customers sharing unauthorized music.

But ISPs are not the Internet police, they are mere conduits of information, writes Farnden, while questioning why yet again the emphasis is being put on ISPs to solve someone else’s problem.

“It’s about time the music industry took responsibility for its own revenues and embraced the new distribution models available instead of trying to shut them down!” he concludes.

But of course, McGuinness recognizes that ISPs aren’t going to fight someone else’s battle voluntarily and his solution is, predictably for the music industry, the use of lawyers.

“Some things have got to come with the force of legislation.”

Article from: TorrentFreak.

According to yet another leaked draft of the highly controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), participating countries will no longer be obliged to impose secondary liability on Internet Service Providers for copyright infringements carried out by their customers. Other harsh measures to counter copyright infringement are still in place.

The level of secrecy which surrounds ACTA, the developing international agreement that aims to target piracy and counterfeiting globally, is unprecedented. It took nearly two years for negotiators to release a heavily redacted draft to the public, but by that time citizens were already fairly well informed having gathered information from previously leaked documents.

Bypassing U.S. opposition to the release of an official text, last night yet another draft leaked out, published by Knowledge Ecology International. The draft contains details on the round of ACTA negotiations which took place last month in the United States.

Notable in the 29 page draft titled ‘Consolidated Text, Reflects Changes Made During the August [Washington] DC Round’ are changes to Section 4 – Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights in the Digital Environment.

With the relevant texts having been removed from earlier drafts, it appears that countries will no longer be required to impose secondary liability for infringements onto their ISPs. Previously, ISPs would be held liable for the copyright infringements of their customers when they failed to respond swiftly to ‘notice and takedown’ requests from copyright holders.

Although dropping the ISP liability paragraphs could be seen as a step in the right direction, there are still various strict ‘anti-infringement’ measures in place. The countries that sign up to ACTA are being asked to provide relevant authorities with the power to order ISPs to hand over the identities of customers suspected of infringing copyright to rights holders on the presentation of a “sufficient claim of infringement”.

Countries are also required to provide “remedies to prevent infringement and remedies which constitute a deterrent to further infringement” along with enforcement procedures which address “technologies that can be used to facilitate widespread infringement”. Although the text is open to interpretation, it opens the door to all kinds of filtering systems that may be used to block websites which are deemed illegal, a measure that is high up on the ACTA wish list of anti-piracy groups.

Participants are further encouraged to “promote cooperative efforts within the business community to effectively address infringement” while preserving “legitimate competition”, “freedom of expression, fair process and privacy”.

According to an analysis by Michael Geist, the anti-circumvention (DRM-breaking) provisions are still on the table.

“There is general agreement on a broad provision that largely mirrors the WIPO Internet treaties in calling for ‘adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against the circumvention of effective technological measures.’ If the obligation were to end there, the provision would simply ensure that all ACTA countries establish anti-circumvention rules, with all the flexibility that WIPO allows,” Geist explains.

However, the United States wants to go further – time will tell if they get their way.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘Robin Hood' tops the chart this week, followed by 'Iron Man 2'. 'The Expendables' completes the top three.

This week there are four newcomers in the list. Robin Hood 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 September 5, 2010 Ranking (last week) Movie Rating / Trailer torrentfreak.com 1 (…) Robin Hood 7.0 / trailer 2 (…) Iron Man 2 7.4 / trailer 3 (1) The Expendables (DVDscr) 7.4 / trailer 4 (2) Salt (R5) 6.7 / trailer 5 (3) Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time 6.9 / trailer 6 (4) Grown Ups 5.7 / trailer 7 (…) MacGruber 5.8 / trailer 8 (8) The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (DVDscr) 4.6 / trailer 9 (5) Sex and the City 2 3.9 / trailer 10 (…) The Last Seven 3.7 / trailer

Article from: TorrentFreak.

In recent years, technical anti-piracy enforcement has taken a less aggressive approach to that previously demonstrated by the infamous MediaDefender. But now, according to a company being hired to protect Bollywood blockbusters, if BitTorrent sites don't cooperate by taking down torrents when asked, they will have denial of service attacks launched against them and material taken down by force.

While anti-piracy actions had grown steadily more aggressive, it still came as a bit of a surprise when it was revealed in 2008 that a DoS-style attack had been launched against Revision3′s BitTorrent tracker.

Founded by Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson of Digg fame along with David Prager of TechTV, Revision3 serves up around 6 million downloads per month. However, their whole operation was turned upside down two years ago when the now-defunct MediaDefender abused Revision3′s tracker for their own ends and when denied access “threw an epic tantrum” which took down the whole site.

Since the demise of MediaDefender, anti-piracy companies certainly haven’t gone away and some have still resorted to DoS-style attacks. Trident Media Guard, the French anti-piracy outfit selected by the music and movie industry to track down French pirates under the new ‘Hadopi’ law, was recently spotted trying to pointlessly smother a user sharing via BitTorrent.

Most groups working in this field keep their techniques private but as we shall see, that’s not true for all of them. According to an India-based company working on behalf of Bollywood studios, there are a number of techniques they can use to deal with movie piracy, from the gentle to the particularly aggressive.

According to Girish Kumar, managing director of AiPlex Software – a company recently hired to combat piracy on the movie My Name is Khan (which trended at #1 on KickAssTorrents earlier this year) – they begin with a simple notice and takedown.

“When we detect a website offering a link or a download, we contact the server hosts and intimate them about the illegal activity. They issue a notice to the site owner,” Kumar explains. “If the site owner does not comply, the site is either suspended or dismissed,” he adds optimistically.

When a copy of the movie Peepli Live appeared on the private Desi tracker ICTorrent on August 13th 2010, AiPlex promptly ordered it to take down the torrent.

Although it’s reported that the site complied, TorrentFreak checked and the file is still there along with several others added in the past few weeks.

“The problem is with torrent sites, which usually do not oblige,” acknowledges Kumar. But AiPlex, which charges between $4,290 and $8,580 to ‘protect’ movies for a four-week period, have other tricks up their sleeve.

“In such cases, we flood the website with requests, which results in database error, causing denial of service as each server has a fixed bandwidth capacity,” Kumar reveals. And it doesn’t stop there.

“At times, we have to go an extra mile and attack the site and destroy the data to stop the movie from circulating further,” he adds.

Given the nature of these pretty outlandish admissions, TorrentFreak contacted AiPlex (who confusingly list ‘Bram Cohen’ as a type of torrent client on their site) for comment but at time of publication we had received no response. We also contacted the administrators at ICTorrent but they were equally silent.

Although it’s long been suspected that ‘dirty tricks’ have been employed by anti-piracy groups in the past, it is very unusual for a company to openly admit using these type of techniques against torrent sites. Should AiPlex offer us a statement, we will update this post accordingly.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Inspired by their flagship site The Pirate Bay, file-sharers across Sweden continue to share files using the BitTorrent protocol largely unhindered and unconcerned by possible legal action. Those that choose to use certain other methods are not quite so safe, as police arrest yet another man for sharing large quantities of files.

Swedish police have been making relatively small but regular arrests of individuals they can prove are sharing large numbers of tracks all at once. On Friday they targeted yet another.

According to P4 Jämtland who quoted the Prosecuters Office in Stockholm, yesterday police carried out an operation in central Sweden against what they described as a suspected “pirate network”.

Acting on a tipoff from music industry outfit IFPI, police carried out the raid in the Östersund region where they arrested a man who they suspect shared around 6,000 music tracks online.

“We have received a notification from the music industry’s association and the data provided pointed us to an address outside Östersund,” said prosecutor Henrik Rasmussen.

“There, we made a seizure of computer media,” he noted, while suggesting that the arrested individual confessed to his activities.

Rasmussen said the offense could result in a prison sentence but going on earlier cases a suspended sentence or fines might be handed down.

In recent years few other countries have generated more news than Sweden when it comes to file-sharing. Through the activities of Piratbyran and The Pirate Bay, this Scandinavian country of less than 10 million people has consistently punched above its weight.

Despite the increased attention of copyright enforcers and the pain they have caused The Pirate Bay, Sweden’s file-sharers have largely carried on regardless, even in the face of tighter legislation designed to curb their activities.

The numbers of citizens using BitTorrent has continued to increase and to date the introduction of IPRED has only affected them marginally, but those who choose to use shared-folder type file-sharing methods aren’t so lucky.

Like many more before him, the individual arrested in Östersund was using Direct Connect to share files. While Direct Connect hubs are more difficult to access than your average torrent site, once in users tend to share their entire collections, in this case music. 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 person sharing them is online.

It is pretty easy to prove large scale infringement against Direct Connect users. Proving the same against BitTorrent users is not, and this is why BitTorrent users are escaping police attention.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

The RIAA may have given up on lawsuits targeting P2P users, but other companies have stepped into their shoes. There are many ways to detect P2P users and collect evidence of their behaviors for use in lawsuits. The simplest way needs nothing more than a BitTorrent client.

We’ve covered some of the more exotic ways people can be tracked or monitored in the past (including some that don’t work) but the lawsuits, abandoned by the record industry as bad for business, have been adopted by a group of lawyers who don’t let a little hypocrisy stand in their way.

There’s a lot of misinformation about which companies and agencies can do what, and how they do it. People claim industry groups or random companies can search and send out letters at random, whereas the reality is the investigator must be authorized or they could be deemed guilty of copyright infringement themselves.

There’s also a lot of confusion about exactly how evidence is collected, with people sometimes believing that it can only be collected from corporate networks, or that private trackers are safe because investigators can’t share and so would be banned for their ratio. Much of this is untrue and these beliefs can make it easier to collect evidence.

The easiest way of all is to simply collect information from trackers. It’s an easy and quick way to do it, although as was revealed 2 years ago, it’s often quite inaccurate.

The next simplest way, which provides lots of data, is just to join a swarm and monitor. Some people believe that clients doing this will stand out, as modified clients will behave differently. The reality is that clients don’t have to be monitored at all.

Researcher Andrew Norton produced this video explaining how a vanilla µTorrent client can be used to identify and log peers without any modification or abnormal behavior.

The raw data shown in the video – all that’s needed for a lawsuit or allegation under most 3-strikes laws – is nothing more than basic communication data. However, it’s critical to note that this data, while it is evidence of activity, is NOT evidence of infringement in many cases.

We can’t testify that this is the method used by any company – they’re notoriously tight-lipped about their methods – but it’s quite possible that it’s being used and sold on as a very high priced service to customers. Selling simple and not always accurate or effective methods for thousands of dollars a week was revealed to be a key method of MediaDefender. Anyone reading this and intending to hire such companies would be advised to ask for a demonstration of their detection system first-hand.

It should, however, come as yet another wakeup call to those using blocklist-based software. Without any way to identify a client using this method, there’s no way to add its IP to the list. In fact, the public availability of block-list contents means it’s extremely easy to avoid being on them.

On the other hand VPNs, proxies and seedboxes will provide some protection, but the only real solution is to press for the peer-review of anti-P2P companies and their methods, but that doesn’t look like it will come any time soon.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

With over 10 million customers, Netflix is a huge player in the online DVD rental business in the United States. Aside from sending out DVDs by mail, customers can also stream movies directly to a wide variety of devices. Despite these services, there are still plenty of people who cancel their accounts. Just for the record, Netflix wants to know through a survey if they are perhaps 'pirates'.

Hollywood often blames BitTorrent sites and other file-sharing platform for billions of dollars of annual lost revenue. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this alleged hit is not felt in all sectors of the movie industry. Netflix, the leading online DVD rental company in the United States, is doing very well.

Despite a direct ‘threat’ from piracy, including many BitTorrent sites, Netflix’s revenue has been growing steadily year after year. In 2006 the company acquired a net income of $49.1 million, which more than doubled to $116 million by 2009. And this growth is not slowing down either. During the second quarter of this year Netflix booked a record-breaking income of $43.5 million.

Although business has been going well for the movie rental company, there will always be customers who decide to cancel their accounts. In common with all self respecting companies, Netflix want to find out why people cancel, and this is the reason why they present leaving customers with an interesting survey.

In the survey, Netflix asks for the reasons why the customer has chosen to leave, the likelihood that he or she will return and what their primary sources for TV-shows and movies will be in the future.

“What will be your primary source for movies and TV episodes after canceling Netflix?” the question reads.

Although this question in itself is nothing out of the ordinary, one of the response options is. Apparently Netflix sees BitTorrent sites as direct competition, and it fears that this may cause some customers to leave.

“Peer-to-peer / bit torrent sites such as Torrentz.com, Demonoid.com, Tvlinks.com, ThePirateBay.org, etc,” is one of the answers that customers can check (see below).

If chosen, the option does not trigger any follow-up questions related to BitTorrent, so the information they gather is not very elaborate. It would be interesting, however, to see how canceling subscribers answer the question above. How many would pick the peer-to-peer option? Perhaps more importantly, how is this information going to change Netflix’s business strategy?

Thanks Dylan.

Netflix’s cancellation survey

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Earlier this year BitTorrent Inc. promised they would release a Linux client this summer, and today they are one step closer to achieving that goal. The company just released uTorrent Server for Linux, a daemonizable 32-bit binary of the uTorrent core, suited to those familiar with running programs from the command line. A full Linux client is expected to follow in the coming weeks.

Ever since uTorrent was first released back in 2005, Mac and Linux users have been begging the developers to code a version compatible with their computers. In 2006, when uTorrent was sold to BitTorrent Inc., the company promised that a Mac version was coming, and in 2008 it was finally released.

Fast forward another two years and a Linux version was announced. Voted as one of the top suggestions for uTorrent in the client’s ‘Idea Bank‘, the massive demand from users for a Linux client was impossible to ignore. In June of this year BitTorrent Inc. officially stated that it was working on Linux programs, and today the first one was released.

BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management Simon Morris realizes that the company pretty much owed this release to the community that played such a vital role in popularizing the protocol.

“If any group has embraced the possibilities and power of BitTorrent for distribution, it is the Linux community. Virtually every distribution is available via torrent download and many even ship with a BitTorrent client in the default configuration,” he says today.

“This morning, we are announcing a preview release of the first of two new products for Linux users,” Morris added. “uTorrent Server, an alpha version available immediately for download, is intended for users seeking a fast, powerful and lightweight BitTorrent client without the need of the full features and complexity of the native GUI.”

Labeled as an Alpha release, uTorrent Linux Server precedes a client with a full featured UI which is expected to be released in the coming weeks. Today’s release is aimed at more Linux users, who are encouraged to leave feedback so the development team can prepare releases for specific Linux distros in the future. The server can be managed through an HTTP API or the uTorrent Web UI pictured below, which is included in the release.

uTorrent Server for Linux (Web UI)

“Today’s version is only the first step, and we will continue to support the Linux user community with new versions in the near future. If you prefer to stick to more conventional user experience, rest assured we are working hard to build a full-featured client, coming soon,” Morris announced. There is currently no update on whether the company will make the “summer” deadline they set earlier.

With uTorrent Server, BitTorrent Inc’s main brand is now supported on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms in common with its main competitor, Vuze. Whether it will reach the massive marketshare it has on Windows with the two latter platforms has still to be seen though. Considering the late entrance, uTorrent has a lot of ground to make up.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

A large scale cyber attack which took down cable, telephone, cellular and satellite networks in Washington for around 15 minutes has been blamed on a female Russian hacker. According to the show Covert Affairs, she is a member of Piratbyrån, the founding group behind The Pirate Bay. The group are somewhat unsuccessfully trying to play down any real-life link to the supposedly fictional claims.

Covert Affairs is a spy action/drama from USA Network which premiered in July 2010. The pilot featured young CIA trainee, Annie Walker, who was guided by Auggie Anderson, a agent who was previously blinded on a mission in Iraq. The next few episodes to date follow Annie in her adventures.

In episode 7, which aired last week, events were focused on the visually impaired Auggie Anderson. While in bed with beautiful TV reporter Liza Hearn (Emmanuelle Vaugier), Auggie notices the phones are down. Not only that, but all TV, cable, Internet, cellular and satellite communications too.

Concerned at the shutdown and eager to get back into the field, Auggie puts his theory to his bosses – that a hacker was responsible and he is the man to go in and sort things out.

To his surprise, Auggie was given the mission but at the briefing (6 minutes into the episode) he had quite a surprise. The hacker turns out to be his elegant Russian ex-girlfriend Natasha Petrovna (Liane Balaban), who Auggie had dumped several years earlier.

As with many shows of this type, Covert Affairs blurs reality with real-life events, people and organizations such as the CIA. In this respect, Petrovna’s background proves to be of particular interest.

Born and raised in St. Petersburg, Russia, Auggie’s old flame has a graduate degree in computer security but according to the CIA is now a member of a particularly sinister group – the Swedish Piracy Bureau Piratbyrån – the founding group behind The Pirate Bay.

“A card carrying anarchist,” remarks an agent in the briefing.

Concerned that there’s rarely smoke without fire, TorrentFreak contacted Piratbyrån founder Marcin de Kaminski for comment.

“What I can say is that we do have strong and positive connections with Russian groups and individuals,” Kaminski explained. “We have experienced really good cooperation at more than one time.”

“It is of course always bad for our credibility when information appears to leak. At the same time we know that the MPAA has been making stuff up for years, so we are not surprised.”

So has Piratbyran ever been involved in hacking, or would it consider employing mysterious hackers?

“If we use secret agents like this Natasha? It is impossible for me to say anything specific about our whereabouts and strategies, but let me make this clear: there is still lots of dirty stuff that has to be taken care of,” warned Kaminski.

But wasn’t Piratbyrån disbanded recently?

“Piratbyrån is in fact not currently an operational entity, that is correct. But at the same time we are working on other partially related projects. You will hear from us again,” Kaminski concludes.

The next episode of the show, Fool In The Rain, airs September 7th. Who knows what other secrets will be revealed….

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Increasingly, game companies are using peer-to-peer powered solutions to deliver games and updates to their customers. While the use of P2P technology could be beneficial for publishers, consumers, and the image of file-sharing in general, the use of P2P by game companies still lacks transparency, privacy and control. A newly published best practices outline aims to change this.

In the past we’ve praised game companies who adopted P2P-based solution for the distribution of their content. Through the use of P2P, the game companies can save resources and consumers often see improved download times. However, there is also a dark side to this apparent synergy.

Although the use of P2P technology has many benefits, it is not always implemented with the interests of consumers in mind. In fact, quite often gamers are simply abused as cheap bandwidth sources by million dollar corporations, often without their knowledge.

Akamai, one of the largest content delivery companies around, has a P2P-based product called the Netsession Interface which is rather abusive towards customers. The software is installed as a Windows service and it is always running in the background. Even worse, most users wont even know that it’s running because it doesn’t show up in task manager. Nothing of the above The fact that it’s running continuously is not mentioned in their EULA.

The NetSession Interface is used by game publishers including Kuma Games, Aeria Games and NetDevil. Customers who play the games have no user controls or visible indicators, while the software uses ‘their’ upload bandwidth to deliver content to other users for an indefinite period after the download is completed.

Besides Akamai there are various other P2P-based solutions that lack transparency, control or privacy, such as Pando’s Media Booster. Blizzard’s BitTorrent Downloader which is used for the distribution of StarCraft 2 and World of Warcraft is one of the more transparent solutions, but that one is not perfect yet either.

From the Akamai example above it is clear that something has to be done to ensure that consumers are not exploited as bandwidth slaves. P2P technology is great, and many consumer would love to donate some, but there has to be a clear set of rules to guarantee that consumers have a choice.

To address this issue, game publisher company Solid State Networks has just released a best practices document (pdf) which emphasizes giving users transparency and control over their resources. According to the company it all boils down to the following directives:

1. Transparency – Make visible and readily accessible information about the presence and operational activity of the P2P technology.

2. Control – Provide the ability to manage, operate and remove the P2P technology in an intuitive and conspicuous manner to the user.

3. Privacy – Ensure the absolute privacy and security of personal information and user originated files.

We think this is a great initiative and sincerely hope that the gaming industry will adopt this, or a similar set of rules, in the interests of the consumer. A quick search on Google shows that most of it is much needed, as there are are many complaints (1,2,3,4,5) from gamers about the lack of transparency and control that most of the current P2P delivery systems offer.

Surprisingly enough, Solid State Networks already offers their very own P2P-based delivery solution for game publishers that adheres to all three directives. However, the other P2P-based solutions that already exist out there can be easily adopted to become ‘fair’ as well.

Below you’ll find an additional PSA, summarizing how and why game publishers should handle P2P-powered game distribution.

Best Practices P2P Technology in Online Games

Article from: TorrentFreak.

For those keen to avoid raping and pillaging music from the nearest torrent site, a one-stop shop where unlimited DRM-free music can be bought for next to nothing must be a great attraction. Zaptunes, a new site advertising just that, has been making headlines this week. Trouble is, everything about it is a scam.

A few days ago various news outlets reported on the existence of Zaptunes, a new site offering DRM-free MP3 downloads for $25. Zaptunes claimed to have 8 million tracks available from the Big Four labels and untold others. As a nice introductory offer, Zaptunes offered their services free for 30 days. Nice.

Yesterday Hypebot had an email exchange with Zaptune’s media spokesperson Anand Patel who said that the site’s downloads “had been licensed from the appropriate major and indie labels.” But Zaptunes also says it offers music from The Beatles, an Internet impossibility as we all know.

“We have a contract with Sony Music, who hold the rights to most of the Beatles music,” said Patel. “I am sorry, but right now I can not give you more details about this contract.”

That’s because there is no contract and Mr Patel is mistaking people for fools. Here’s a short list of 13 unlucky reasons why (be sure to check out number 12 especially) and feel free to add more in the comments, there are dozens.

1. Zaptunes.com claims to be a San Francisco, CA based start-up. “With about $5 million in funding from various Venture Capitalists, we have steadily grown and made a strong foothold in the music industry,” they claim.

In fact, Zaptunes appeared just a few weeks ago on July 19th and despite $5 million in funding still begged people on Twitter to advertise for them with a tempting $10,000 prize due to be paid out August 22nd. No winners yet? We are surprised….

Tip: Try speaking to the press Zaptunes, they advertise your product for free….

2. Zaptunes isn’t confident that they’ll be around long. They registered their domain on July 19th 2010 – it expires on the same date next year. There’s stability for you.

3. Even though TheBeatles Twitter account with 109,000 followers follows the Zaptunes Twitter account, that doesn’t mean Zaptunes is legit, it just means people are keeping an eye on them. Zaptunes says it offers Beatles tracks. It does not.

4. Zaptunes promotes the availability of Eminem tracks, even though it has none. Zaptunes copied its entire Eminem fact page from an article they found using Google.

Their latest blog post was ripped from Last.fm and the one below that is ripped from MusicByDay. In fact, none of their posts are their own work.

Last.fm content is very popular on Zaptunes – it seems that much of the album art is ripped from there.

5. Other dodgy domains connect to Zaptunes.com including CaptainSam.com, which was registered by Tarandeep Singh Gill living at the rather official sounding 1 Something Road, Some City, California 94127. Even more reassuring is the Zaptunes.co.tv domain which also links to ZapTunes.com and is registered to ‘person surname’ living in ‘londra, GB’ – wherever that is.

6. Zaptunes says it offers tracks for free from the major labels. Anyone with any knowledge of the Big Four know full well that they never, ever give their music away en masse.

7. Zaptunes says it has a unique business model which enables it to offer unlimited downloads. None of the big labels together agree to unlimited downloads on a download service at any price.

8. Zaptunes’ search engine suggests they offer both unreleased tracks and a selection of bootlegs. The major labels love this kind of thing from their partners.

9. Despite all the claims, Zaptunes doesn’t offer ANY music whatsoever. From its own site:

ZapTunes.com does not provide any downloads from its servers. ZapTunes.com just enables its members to find free or paid music available on the Internet. The Artists/Tracks displayed on the home page and other parts of the website are for promotional purposes only and may not be available for free or paid download.

ZapTunes.com has a database of websites that offer free and legal music downloads. Whenever a registered members looks for a song, ZapTunes searches for that song in the database, and if it finds a website offering a legal download of that song, it is displayed it to the user. If not, then ZapTunes looks for that song on Amazon, iTunes and various other paid to download websites, and displays the user their options. ZapTunes is not helping or promoting piracy in any way.

10. ZapTunes says its name is a registered trademark. Our searches with the United States Patent and Trademark Office drew a big blank.

11. Most of the site’s Privacy Policy was cut-and-pasted from here and the ‘Terms of Use‘ on ZapTunes should be read very, very closely. Anyone giving over their credit card details could be in for a very nasty surprise. DON’T DO IT!

12. Another URL that redirects to Zaptunes is www.24hfunds.com. Readers of this discussion thread on TalkGold will see that by page 6, the scheme promoted by its owner was deemed to be a scam. A search on Google for ’24hfunds and scam’ turned up 5,000 results.

13. Those unlucky enough to have given their details over already will see charges on their credit card account from TrackYourPics.com – the following is currently displayed on their site, spelling errors intact:

“Did you see a charge on your credit card with TRACKYOURPICS.COM? It is because you either signed up on trackyourpics.com or ZapTunes.com. All the subscriptions have been cancelled, so you will not see any furher charges on your credit card. Also, we are in the process or reversing the charges already made.”

TrackYourPics is registered to an address in San Francisco, California. Google seems to think that location is a drain cover.

A fitting place for Zaptunes. Stay well away.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Just three days after filmmaker Simon Klose started a fundraiser to complete his upcoming Pirate Bay documentary, the seed funding goal of $25,000 has already been reached. The Pirate audience has been extremely generous, with a full 27 days left the counter currently sits at $28,099.

A few days ago we reported that Swedish filmmaker and producer Simon Klose had begun to raise money for his upcoming documentary about the founders of the site titled ‘TPB-AFK’.

“TPB AFK is not a fan movie about the Pirate Bay, neither is it a journalistic piece on copyright conflict,” said Klose when describing his film. “It’s an observational, character driven film about three guys whose hobby homepage became the embryo of a global political movement.”

Although the three Pirate Bay founders who star in the documentary are no longer affiliated with the site, it appears that the new Pirate Bay owners would also like to see the documentary released.

Over the past days the fundraiser has enjoyed a prominent link on the Pirate Bay homepage, which in part explains the success of the campaign – the required $25,000 was raised in just three days.

At the time of writing, a massive $28,099 has been pledged and this figure is increasing by the hour.

TPB-AFK Trailer

Now that the funding is in, Klose can hire a professional editor and studio to complete the film. That said, the final premiere date depends on several other factors, most importantly how the upcoming appeal of The Pirate Bay trial plays out.

“The process of documenting processes is unpredictible. If the Swedish court process doesn’t miraculously speed up in The Pirate Bay trials, we’re at least a year away from the opening night of TPB AFK,” Klose comments in a blog post.

In other words, you can expect TPB-AFK to be released sometime in the coming years. Those who want to support Klose and TPB-AFK can still pledge their donation at Kickstarter, as there are 27 days left.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

There are tens of thousands of people out there receiving letters from lawyers which demand payments to make potential copyright infringement lawsuits go away. Those wrongfully accused have been fighting back in a number of ways, and not without success. Now a team of lawyers is offering to coordinate a group action, with the aim of gathering compensation for victims through harassment claims.

Last month it was revealed that ACS:Law, the now infamous one-man law firm that has sent out tens of thousands demands for cash settlements to make supposed copyright infringement lawsuits go away, has been referred to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal on allegations of misconduct.

This referral, achieved through the tireless work of those wrongfully accused and consumer groups such as Which? and BeingThreatened.com, was much-welcomed news. But the wheels of justice can turn very slowly. It could take months, maybe more than a year, for the authorities to do their work. This is a serious problem for those still affected by the actions of ACS:Law principal Andrew Crossley.

Make no mistake, this is not going away soon. Crossley is regularly going to court and gaining the identities of thousands more individuals he says are infringing his clients’ copyrights, yet he has no solid proof in almost any instance that this is the case. As a result of flawed evidence, huge numbers of people say they have been accused in error.

Noticing this apparent failing, a team of lawyers in the north of England have announced that they are pursuing a group action and are urging people to come forward to participate. Noting that Crossley has been referred to the SDT for “bullying and excessive conduct”, Ralli Solicitors say that letter recipients may be entitled to compensation for harassment.

“It can be incredibly upsetting for people to receive such letters and they may well have a claim for harassment against ACS Law so I am urging them to come forward,” says Michael Forrester of Ralli’s Intellectual Property and Harassment Law team.

Ralli appears to have considerable experience in this field, having represented several police officers in their claims of harassment made against the Chief Constable of Northumbria Police in 2009.

TorrentFreak contacted Ralli to find out more about the company’s offer. Why does the law firm feel that letter recipients may have been harassed?

“It appears people have been harassed as they have been alarmed and distressed by these letters,” Ralli’s Robert Illidge explained. “A course of conduct which amount to harassment, including alarming and/or distressing a person, is prohibited by the law.”

So what conditions must be met for a letter recipient to be considered eligible for inclusion in the group action? According to Illidge, not many.

“A receipt of correspondence from ACS law, or another firm, falsely accusing a person of infringement,” he told us.

While in some cases the reasons why people are being wrongfully identified may never be known, it is clear that in untold cases innocent bill payers who have carried out no file-sharing at all are getting multiple letters from ACS:Law. Their claims of innocence are going ignored.

The law says that in order to have infringed copyright, bill payers must have either shared files themselves or explicitly authorized someone else to do the act. Since ACS:Law cannot possibly know who is sat at a computer keyboard at any particular time, they wrongfully suggest that the bill payer is the infringer or it is their responsibility to say who did the alleged file-sharing. They are wrong on both counts and people who fall into this category might well consider a claim.

As is common with most cash demands sent to alleged copyright infringers, the settlement amount required by the likes of ACS:Law is carefully weighted. Not too much so that the majority simply can’t pay, and just low enough to make investing in a lawyer to shout their corner an unattractive proposition. So how much will it cost to file for harassment with Ralli?

“Our aim is for the actions to cost claimants nothing,” Illidge told us. “It depends on who is involved, how many claims and how the cases are presented. There are a number of ways of funding group action litigation such as the ‘no win, no fee’ basis.”

So, if successful in their action, what could participants hope to achieve?

“If successful, participants can expect to receive damages for the financial loss and anxiety the letters and other correspondence have caused,” says Illidge. “The law also allows individuals to obtain injunctions in certain specific circumstances, which, if obtained would prevent the harassment from continuing.”

TorrentFreak can’t vouch for Ralli, but with our experience of these actions our friendly advice to bill payers is simple. If you receive a letter addressed to you and you didn’t do what these people say you did, don’t pay. With an eye on the excellent Speculative Invoicing Handbook from BeingThreatened.com, write a single firm but brief letter denying the accusations. If you are harassed again, write to the SRA – they know Mr Crossley very well.

By all means see what Ralli have to offer too. ‘No Win, No Fee’ is just right, but if it’s going to cost much more than a few pounds, don’t bother. ACS:Law have a track record of leaving people alone who have the nerve to stand up to them – you can do that yourselves.

Anyone seeking additional information can contact Michael Forrester or Clare Perchal on 0161 832 6131 or by emailing harassment@ralli.co.uk.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Nicely timed at the start of the new college year, a new BitTorrent site dedicated to sharing knowledge in the form of textbooks has surfaced. Torrent My Book - a project run by two college students - aims to become the world’s largest BitTorrent index of textbooks, following in the footsteps of the late TextBookTorrents.

At the start of the college year in 2008 tens of thousands of students were flocking to TextBookTorrents. Their goal? To save hundreds of dollars on expensive books.

At its height the site had more than 70,000 members, with over 20,000 peers trading files at any given point in time.

The site managed to fly under the radar for a long time, but as it expanded the press and book publishers started to take notice. This unwanted attention led to numerous takedown requests and legal threats were also directed at the owner of the site, who saw no other option than to turn the final page in October 2008.

After it closed, students were left with no other option than to buy their books or to find other sources where they could share them. Oddly enough, the gap left by TextBookTorrents was never filled in the two years since its demise, despite the fact that eBooks have become mainstream and eReaders more affordable. This absence didn’t go unnoticed to a duo of college students, who launched the site Torrent My Books a few days ago.

“We were disheartened when we heard that TextbookTorrents was shutting down way back when, and since we did not see any sites coming up to replace it, we decided to take it upon ourselves to do something,” one of the founders explained to TorrentFreak.

The purpose of TorrentMyBooks is to be a place where people can share books freely, not just textbooks, although that is the main focus. The main difference with the late TextBookTorrents is that the site doesn’t have a tracker. It just provides an index of book related torrents where users can add to and download from.

The appearance and feature set of the site is similar to many other sites. Visitors can browse through the different sections, and the homepage of the site shows the more recent titles added to the various categories. TorrentMyBooks currently lists just over hundred torrents, but the founders hope there will be thousands of titles available soon.

Science Books on Torrent My Books

“The motivation for creating the site is based on a personal experience of mine in college,” half of the duo told TorrentFreak. “One semester I needed to take an Art History class and it required the students to buy a textbook which cost roughly $150 USD. Fast forward to the end of the semester, I go to the school book store to sell back the book. I am told flat out that it is out of date and they cannot buy the book.”

“I was appalled that an art HISTORY book goes out of date. How does a book about the history of art change so much that you need a new edition? The only reason I can think of is that publishers have a monopoly and are able to force students to buy a new edition,” TorrentMyBook’s co-founder says.

It is pretty clear where the motivation of the site’s founders come from, but then there’s always the follow up question that deals with the morality of the operation. Here, the site’s co-founder – annex textbook vigilante – pictures himself on the right side of the argument as well.

“The morality of torrenting books is not clearly defined. You can’t really put a price on sharing knowledge such as books. That’s why most libraries are free. I also do not mind paying for books but publishers like to take advantage of students which does not seem right to me. Also, as a student, I do notice that people are looking for a cheaper alternative to books.”

Then there’s one hurdle left, the legality of the operation. Considering the history of TextBookTorrents and the piracy paranoia among book publishers as of late, the founders of TorrentMyBooks can expect plenty of DMCA notices, or worse. This is something they considered before starting the site, but nonetheless they will carry out their ambitions.

“One must be worried about the legal implications. However, we are going to be diligent in creating the number one source for books,” we were told.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Another day, another anti-piracy campaign. This one, from the MPA and AFACT-backed Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation, is trying a slightly different approach. Instead of accusing people outright of being movie and TV show pirates, it cuts them some slack and treats them like children instead. It seems that some people just don't know they are pirates.

The relatively new Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation (IPAF) was created by the Australian movie and TV industries to “promote the value of the industry by raising awareness, understanding and appreciation of intellectual property, and its role and value in society.”

Members of IPAF include Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), Motion Picture Association (MPA), Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia, Australian Visual Software Distributors Association and various cinema owners and DVD rental outlets such as Blockbuster.

Last year IPAF embarked on a campaign to educate Australia’s children on the evils of copyright infringement in an attempt to “motivate a change in attitudes and behavior to reduce public demand for illegal copies of film and television programs.”

While many anti-piracy groups take a fairly aggressive angle when sending their message, IPAF take a more softly-softly approach. If AFACT is bad cop, IPAF is his gentler, more reasonable-sounding counterpart.

Good cop has just launched his new nationwide anti-piracy campaign with the unusual title of ‘Accidental Pirate’.

“New research, released just today, revealed that 34% of Aussies see piracy as stealing or theft but then regularly do it by burning, buying or downloading illegal or unauthorised copies of films or TV programs,” explains IPAF. “In other words, 1 in 3 of us do something that we don’t agree with. So to describe this disconnection between actions and beliefs, we coined the phrase ‘Accidental Pirate’.”

Right. So people know piracy is ‘wrong’ but because they still carry on it’s an ‘accident’? That doesn’t seem to fit very well does it?

You can see what IPAF are trying to do though, it’s just badly executed. If you’re going to educate people on the premise that they didn’t know that their actions were ‘wrong’ in the first place (so as not to immediately antagonize them), at least don’t patronize them. “There, there, you know it’s wrong but let’s just pretend it was an accident, eh?” Please.

So what does the campaign have to say. Well, it’s pretty much standard stuff. The campaign’s homepage is running a Flash questionnaire with five questions that readers have the chance to answer. Getting a question right gets a round of applause from the assembled cinema audience, but getting one wrong gets a big X and a short lesson in copyright.

Questions 2, 3 and 5 all involve copying or buying pirated copies of real DVDs and the legalities of that. People don’t ‘accidentally’ believe that pirate DVDs are legal – do they?

Questions 1 and 4 involve file-sharing but if the industry IPAF claims to protect would simply get their act together, these questions wouldn’t even be necessary.

Question 1: Your favorite TV show has just aired overseas. It won’t be shown here for months. While browsing the web you notice it’s available for download for free. Do you download it?

Every time TV-show downloaders in Australia are asked why they do what they do, one of the top answers is always because they are treated like second-class citizens when it comes to release dates. Why do their favorite series take months to appear officially down under? Whatever the reason, it’s a very, very poor one, and no surprise people turn to BitTorrent.

Question 4: You’re browsing the Internet and come across a free download site. You notice a movie that’s just hit the cinemas here. Do you download it?

If people find those then, yes, they probably would. The movie industry is always very clear – if you see a brand new movie on the Internet it’s illegal, because we (stubbornly) don’t offer this service. This type of piracy could be all but wiped out by offering people a legal alternative at a reasonable price in their own homes.

Quiz aside, it’s all pretty much standard stuff. Movie industry people and actors rolled out to make ‘accidental’ pirates feel sorry for the little guy in the film-making world.

You can take the questionnaire for yourself. If you get any ‘wrong’ move directly to the back of the class, put you hands on your head and please try to do better in the future. And stop accidentally downloading torrents. The movie industry depends on it.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent, ‘The Expendables' tops the chart this week, followed by 'Salt'. 'Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time' completes the top three.

This week there are four newcomers in the list. The Expendables is the most downloaded movie on BitTorrent this week (now as DVD screener), currently shared by more than 100,000 people.

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 August 29, 2010 Ranking (last week) Movie Rating / Trailer torrentfreak.com 1 (…) The Expendables (DVDscr) 7.4 / trailer 2 (1) Salt (R5) 6.7 / trailer 3 (2) Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time 6.9 / trailer 4 (…) Grown Ups 5.7 / trailer 5 (5) Sex and the City 2 3.9 / trailer 6 (…) Wild Target 6.9 / trailer 7 (…) The Other Guys (DVDscr) 7.1 / trailer 8 (3) The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (DVDscr) 4.6 / trailer 9 (4) Centurion 6.6 / trailer 10 (8) Toy Story 3 (TC) 9.0 / trailer

Article from: TorrentFreak.

In recent months thousands of US BitTorrent users have been sued for allegedly having shared movies such as The Hurt Locker and Far Cry. Because the settlement amount proposed by the copyright holders is less than hiring a defense lawyer, many defendants have not sought legal representation. Acknowledging this injustice, attorney Graham Syfert is now offering a cheap solution to the problem.

The U.S. Copyright Group (USCG) has been all over the news in recent months. The lawyer group sued thousands of BitTorrent users who allegedly file-shared motion pictures belonging to their clients, including the Oscar-winning Hurt Locker and more obscure titles such as Far Cry and Call of the Wild.

On behalf of the copyright holders, USCG has already sent settlement offers to many affected BitTorrent users. To settle the case the alleged copyright infringers have to pay up to $2,500 or face the risk of higher penalties in a full-blown court case.

The problem with this scheme is that defendants have few viable options to defend their rights. Hiring an attorney often costs more than the settlement amount, and ignoring the settlement offer might lead to an even worse outcome.

Two months ago the EFF published a list of attorneys that could help advise and possibly represent subpoena targets. Although this is a great pointer for individuals who don’t know where to get decent legal representation, all the listed attorneys still ask hundreds of dollars or more for their services.

Attorney Graham Syfert of the Affinity Law Firm is one of the lawyers listed by the EFF, and like the others he has been contacted numerous times by those targeted by USCG. Although Syfert is willing to help them all, for many the costs of hiring an attorney are simply too high.

“One of the major problems that people encounter when trying to hire me on these cases, is that a settlement is approximately what an attorney would need to even begin a defense,” Syfert told TorrentFreak.

To address this issue, Syfert decided to prepare several documents that allow defendants to represent themselves. The forms for pro se (self help) representation include a Motion to Quash, Motion to Dismiss, Affidavit in Support and a Motion for Protective Support. All forms are fillable and are accompanied with detailed instructions of how they should be used.

In preparing the documents, Syfert collaborated with other attorney’s listed on EFF’s website, and he has high hopes that they will be sufficient to dismantle USCG’s ‘pay-up-or-else’ scheme.

“My dream would be to have 10,000-20,000 people file all three documents to the lawyers and severely cripple the entire process and show them that you shouldn’t be allowed to join so many defendants,” Syfert informed TorrentFreak.

Two of the many defenses listed in the documents

However, as is often the case when dealing with lawyers, there is a catch. When first contacting TorrentFreak, Syfert was offering the documents for sale, priced at $99.00. Although that’s still much cheaper than hiring an attorney, we voiced concerns that it looks like another attempt to make a few bucks off the lawsuits.

Luckily, these words didn’t go completely unnoticed to Syfert. “I decided to make it $9.99 instead of $99.00, probably for the next 5 days. Still cheaper than a DVD,” he told us after he slashed the price. Defendants can now buy the full package for under 10 bucks. To our best knowledge that is the cheapest solution to counter USCG’s threats thus far.

Even at the low price of $9.99, considering the target group of these cases it probably won’t take long for ‘pirated’ versions of these documents to appear on torrent and other file-sharing sites. Those tempted should keep in mind though that sharing copyrighted material without consent can sometimes lead to trouble, but it’s highly probable they know that already.

Article from: TorrentFreak.