Despite its work with rightsholders, this week the United States Trade Representative described Russian social networking giant vKontakte as one of the world's most notorious pirate markets. Speaking with TorrentFreak, VK says it will continue its work to proactively license all the content available on its platform. Every year the United States Trade Representative calls on foreign countries to take action against a broad range of websites which are allegedly involved in copyright infringement. Perhaps understandably, The Pirate Bay is one of the most obvious platforms to appear in the USTR’s review but there are others that don’t fit the same profile. One of those is Russian social networking giant vKontakte (VK). Like all platforms with millions of users contributing content on a daily basis, VK has to deal with allegations of copyright infringement. Traditionally, the most vocal critics have hailed from the music industry but in recent times VK has made its peace with several distributors via licensing deals. But despite these efforts, VK is apparently still falling short of the standards set by the United States government. In its yearly “Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets” report published this week, the United States Trade Representative laid out the case against VK. “Nominated again this year, VK is one of the most popular sites in the world and continues to operate as an extremely popular social networking site in Russia and neighboring countries. VK reportedly facilitates the distribution of copyright-infringing files,” the USTR wrote. Noting the commercial and cultural value of social networking platforms that go about their business without infringing rightsholders’ copyrights, the USTR said that VK’s recent steps to tackle piracy were “encouraging”. VK has reached deals with major labels, taken steps taken to limit third-party applications dedicated to downloading infringing content, and experimented with fingerprinting technology, the USTR said. Even the RIAA said it was happy with VK, having taken the social network off its list in October. Nevertheless, the mere fact that VK is on the USTR list again this cycle indicates that rightsholders outside the music industry are still complaining about the site. In its report, the USTR appeared to confirm it. “Despite these positive signals, VK reportedly continues to be a hub of infringing activity and continues to be listed pending the institutionalization of appropriate measures to promote respect on its platform for IPR of all right holders, not just those with whom it has contracts, that are comparable to those measures used by other social media sites,” the USTR said. Given that during the summer vKontakte felt it was already time for it to be removed from the United States’ blacklist, TorrentFreak caught up with the social network to gauge its reaction to this week’s apparent snub from the USTR. “VKontakte continues its proactive work on licensing all audio and video content available on the social network,” a VK spokesperson said. “In 2016, the Company signed an agreement with the world’s leading international music rights holders, including Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, The Orchard, Merlin Network and Believe Digital, among others. The music section of VK’s mobile app for iOS has been available to users since August 2016, after a two-year absence.” Addressing the USTR’s claims over other contentious content still present on the platform, VK said that more progress would be made during 2017. “Next year, the Company will continue its focus on signing up the remaining rights holders not covered by the previous agreements,” the company said. The measured tone from VK shows an unexpected level of patience, particularly after being mentioned in the same breath as The Pirate Bay yet again and despite significant efforts to appease rightsholders. Will it have done enough by this time next year? Only time will tell. source:Torrentfreak

The US Government has listed some of the largest piracy websites and other copyright-infringing venues. The USTR calls on foreign countries to take action against popular piracy sites such as The Pirate Bay, which has important "symbolic value," according to the authorities. In addition, stream-ripping is mentioned as an emerging threat. In its yearly “Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets”, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has listed more than a dozen websites said to be involved in piracy and counterfeiting. The overview is largely based on input from industry groups including the RIAA and MPAA, who submitted their recommendations a few weeks ago. While the USTR admits that the list is not meant to reflect legal violations, the goal of the review is to motivate owners and foreign Governments to take appropriate action and reduce piracy. “The United States encourages all responsible authorities to intensify efforts to combat piracy and counterfeiting, and to use the information contained in the Notorious Markets List to pursue legal actions where appropriate,” the USTR announced. As in previous years, The Pirate Bay remains one of the primary offenders. According to the USTR, the site continues to facilitate downloading of copyright-infringing material. The Government further highlights the site’s resilience and “symbolic importance” as one of the longest-running pirate sites “Despite enforcement actions around the world and drawn-out legal battles against its operators, The Pirate Bay is of symbolic importance as one of the longest-running and most vocal torrent sites for admittedly illegal downloads of movies, television, music, and other copyrighted content,” the report reads. Other prominent torrent sites mentioned in the review are ExtraTorrent, Rutorrent, RARBG, and 1337x.to. For the first time, USTR has also included a stream ripping site; YouTube-MP3.org. While this phenomenon has been around for a decade, the report includes a special “issue focus” mentioning it as an emerging threat. “Stream ripping is an emerging trend in digital copyright infringement that is increasingly causing substantial economic harm to music creators and undermining legitimate services,” the USTR writes. The mention follows a report from earlier this year, which also highlighted concerns about stream ripping. Soon after, several major music labels filed a lawsuit against YouTube-MP3 in a U.S. federal court. A few newcomers aside, the review is mostly made up of familiar names, including 4shared, Putlocker, Nowvideo, Rapidgator and Uploaded, as well as several non-English language piracy portals and counterfeiting platforms. In addition to individual sites and services, the USTR notes that some hosting services have also become piracy havens. The report specifically calls out the Swiss company Private layer for hosting the-watch-series.to, projectfree-tv, using a legal loophole. The U.S has urged Switzerland to implement new legislation to make it easier to take action against pirate sites, but this hasn’t happened thus far. The full list of the notorious online pirate sites and services that are highlighted in the report (pdf) are included below. The complete overview also contains various e-commerce and counterfeiting sites, including Alibaba’s Taobao.com. — – 4shared.com – Beevideo.tv – Bookfi and Libgen – ExtraTorrent – Gongchang.com – Movshare group (allegedly operating Nowvideo.sx, Watchseriesfree.to, Videoweed.es, Novamov.com and others) – MP3va.com – Muaban.net – Myegy.to – Nanjing Imperiosus (domainerschoice.com) – Pobieramy24.pl, Darkwarez.pl, Catshare.net and Fileshark.pl – Private Layer hosted sites (including the-watch-series.to and projectfree-tv.to) – Putlocker – RARBG.to – Rutracker.org and Rapidgator.org – Taobao.com – The Pirate Bay – Uploaded.net – Vibbo.com – VK.com – Youtube-MP3.org Source :Torrentfreak

Xmas is around the corner, festive mood everywhere... We couldnt miss it, could we? Win amazing prizes, from cutting-edge ALIENWARE laptop to PS4s and XBOX ONEs! Read about the rules and go grab your tickets today here! Discuss about it on the forums here! On a side note, we corrected alot of bugs(visuals and not) and finally pushed a fix that was affecting a small minority of our users using custom fonts. Please hard refresh your browsers( CTRL+ F5) and/or try to clear your cookies to see the new changes! Merry xmas!

Freeleech All Torrents Free Karma has set the torrents FREE. set by DRz Until 28 Dec 2016 (6d 04:17:11 to go)

A man who sold devices containing piracy-enabled custom builds of Kodi has been arrested in the UK. The 32-year-old company director from Norfolk was detained by police last week. Since then, both the man and his wife have allegedly been subjected to death threats on Facebook. With more and more piracy websites getting blocked in the UK, set-top Android devices loaded with Kodi and third-party addons have become the next big thing. When configured in the correct manner, these devices offer a bewildering amount of free content, including live TV, all the latest movies, PPVs and much more. People can easily set them up themselves, but others would rather pay someone else to do the work for them. As a result, a whole cottage industry has sprung up in the UK, with people programming Firesticks and similar platforms to receive pirate content and selling them via eBay, Amazon, local papers and Facebook. They usually get sold for about double the price of the basic hardware but plenty of people manage to make more than £100 profit per device. One of these outfits was known online as Oobersticks. The company offered relatively expensive devices containing a custom build of Kodi offering all the usual treats. TF is informed these boxes were shipped out only partly configured, with customers required to complete the final install themselves. Although it’s unclear who placed it, an advert for the product which appeared over the summer explains the device’s capabilities. “How many of you pay for Sky? BT? Netflix? Well with the OoberStick you don’t have to. It simply plugs into the HDMI port of your TV. You then have different sections,” the advert reads. “You have sport which not only has all Sky Sports channels and BT Sport. You can watch every single Premier League match. It has thousands of movies and tv shows. All in HD quality. It really is a fantastic piece of kit.” These promotional videos 1, 2 also suggest that the company may have offered (or at least resold) some kind of IPTV service. This week, however, it all came to an end. On Tuesday morning last week at around 7:20am, police in Norfolk arrested a 32-year-old man who was a director of two companies connected with the sales of the devices. Around six officers attended, together with an individual representing Sky TV. A source familiar with the situation, who spoke with TF on condition of anonymity, said that the police were looking for servers and potentially some kind of datacenter. The source also added that while computers, phones and other hardware were seized, the haul did not include any Android devices. With a fraud and copyright infringement investigation underway, the man was eventually freed on police bail until a date in 2017. However, in addition to a police inquiry, he also has other issues to face. Facebook is awash with complaints from unhappy Ooberstick customers, with many stating that the devices no longer work or otherwise failed to perform as advertised. A post (since deleted) on MoneySavingExpert.com reveals delivery problems were also an issue. “Placed an order with oober for the oobersupreme box in November. Still haven’t received my box. Emailed them at start of the week to find out where it is. Reply stated it will be with me by the end of this week. They have now taken websites offline and removed their Facebook page. Emails are also bouncing back,” it said. TorrentFreak understands that due to Ooberstick’s owner being served with a cease and desist order from Sky, all of the websites and Facebook pages connected with the company had to be taken down. This has resulted in some customers feeling they’ve been left in the dark. Some have reportedly sent death threats to the man and his business partner. Even his wife and her grandchild have been threatened. Contacted by TorrentFreak, the arrested man said that he was running what he believed to be an entirely legal business. He spoke on condition of anonymity due to concern over the death threats. “I was running a successful business which was both VAT registered in the U.K. and with Worldpay as my payment merchant. For me to get both of those, those parties have to be sure that what I was doing was legal,” he says. “I certainly thought what I was doing was legal. Streaming for the end user is legal as nothing is being downloaded. I do believe the EU court of law ruled on that.” According to a local media report, some customers have been successful in getting money back from their banks. The arrested man said that other customers will be refunded in advance of the company going into liquidation. However, with a money laundering investigation underway, that may be more easily said than done.

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Over the past year science's pirate portal Sci-Hub has become the center of an academic debate about copyright's 'stranglehold' on science. The site was sued by one of the largest academic publishers but also received praise from researchers. This controversy makes its founder, Alexandra Elbakyan, one of the top ten people that mattered in science this year, according to Nature. Last year, academic publisher Elsevier filed a complaint against Sci-Hub and several related “pirate” sites. It accused the websites of making academic papers widely available to the public, without permission. While Sci-Hub is nothing like the average pirate site, it is just as illegal according to Elsevier’s legal team, which obtained a preliminary injunction from a New York District Court last fall. The injunction ordered Sci-Hub’s founder Alexandra Elbakyan to quit offering access to any Elsevier content. However, this didn’t happen. Instead of taking Sci-Hub down, the lawsuit and the associated media attention only helped the site grow. Just a few months ago we reported that its users were downloading hundreds of thousands of papers per day. Elbakyan put her finger on one of the biggest frustrations of scientists; the fact that so much fundamental research is hidden behind a paywall, where only an elite group can access them. While piracy is ‘not done’ for most academics, at least until after they graduate, Sci-Hub has received a lot of support. This week the prestigious publication Nature even picked the site’s founder as one of the ten people that mattered in 2016. “Few people support the fact that she acted illegally, but many see Sci-Hub as advancing the cause of the open-access movement, which holds that papers should be made (legally) free to read and reuse,” Nature writes. One of the open access supporters who praises Sci-Hub’s founder is Michael Eisen, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley “What she did is nothing short of awesome,” he tells Nature. “Lack of access to the scientific literature is a massive injustice, and she fixed it with one fell swoop.” For now, Elbakyan doesn’t see any reason to stop what she’s doing. When Elsevier shut down Sci-Hub’s domain name, the site simply moved to a new one, continuing business as usual. This stance is welcomed by many researchers, especially in developing countries where universities often don’t have the funds to pay for access to these papers. As such, Elbakyan believes she’s doing the right thing. “Is there anything wrong or shameful in running a research-access website such as Sci-Hub? I think no, therefore I can be open about my activities,” she says. At the same time, the pushback against Elsevier continues to grow. Just recently, Taiwanese Universities decided to cancel subscriptions to its journals, stating that the costs are unreasonably high. On the legal front, progress in the case between Sci-Hub and Elsevier has been slow. There’s a pre-trial conference scheduled for February next year, so it will take a few more months at least before that concludes. Meanwhile, the download counter at Sci-Hub keeps on spinning. Thus far, the site has served up 75 million downloads this year, which by one estimate is good for three percent of all science publisher downloads worldwide.

Telstra has become the very first Australian ISP to block The Pirate Bay, a move designed to crack down on piracy in the country. However, the blocking method chosen by the ISP is the most basic option permitted under the Federal Court's order. As a result, it's been defeated in seconds. Following a case brought by rightsholders including Roadshow Films, Foxtel, Disney, Paramount, Columbia, and 20th Century Fox, more than fifty Internet service providers in Australia are now required to start barring subscriber access to selected ‘pirate’ sites. In a ruling last week, the Federal Court decided that by the end of the year, The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, TorrentHound, IsoHunt and streaming service SolarMovie will all have to be rendered inaccessible to subscribers in Australia. The same also applies to dozens of proxy and mirror sites. With just under two weeks before the deadline expires, ISP Telstra has decided to move quickly. During the past few hours the service provider began its blocking regime, starting with The Pirate Bay. As ordered by the Federal Court, visitors to the site are now being met by a landing page which explains why they can no longer access it. As previously reported, the order from the Court allows ISPs to choose how to implement the blockade, including DNS blocking, IP address blocking (or IP re-routing), URL blocking, or “any alternative technical means” approved by a rightsholder. It appears that Telstra has chosen to implement a DNS block, the weakest option available. As a result, it is defeated in a matter of seconds with a just a few clicks and not a penny spent. Many users are already choosing to configure their computers to use Google’s DNS instead of Telstra’s, which simply means adding a few digits to a setting in Windows. Others are using OpenDNS since there is a belief that the Cisco-owned company logs less data than Google does. However, since accessing The Pirate Bay itself isn’t a crime, any data held in this circumstance is likely to hold little value. Of course, those concerned about privacy can still turn to VPNs, which are already proving of greater interest to Australians since news of the court order landed last week. It’s also worth noting that while a simple DNS tweak defeat’s Telstra’s blocking efforts, other ISPs may choose a more secure option for which DNS won’t provide a solution. In that case a VPN is the only all-round secure option. Nevertheless, as it stands today a head-shaking situation prevails. For years, rightsholders have lobbied for site-blocking in Australia. They even managed to have the law changed to allow it to happen. They then went to court and dragged themselves and ISPs through thousands of hours of legal work, culminating in the Federal Court itself ordering a blockade. And Internet users got round it all in less time than it took to read this article. source : https://torrentfreak.com/first-aussie-pirate-bay-block-gets-defeated-in-seconds-161220/

Get Around Censorship Filters and easily access TorrentDay.com 1) For Chrome use: Touch VPN or Browsec or Gom VPN or Betternet or Hoxx VPN 2) For Firefox use: Browsec or ZenMate or Hoxx VPN 3) Stop DNS leaks! Change your DNS now!

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A large group of original KickassTorrent staffers has launched a reincarnation of the infamous torrent site, hoping to restore it to its former glory. The new site uses a fresh and secure database, but the look and feel of the platform remains the same. A few months ago a criminal investegation by the U.S. Government brought down KickassTorrents, the largest torrent site at the time. As a result, millions of people were left without their favorite torrent site. This included a very active community of admins, moderators and forum members. Shortly after the shutdown, several KAT-crew members regrouped in an effort to get the community part of the site back up. They launched the Katcr.co forum as their new home and hinted that torrents could come back too, in the future. Today is the big day as Katcr.co (KATcr) has now launched a fully operational torrent site, which looks identical to its predecessor. The site starts with a clean user database but many members of the original staff are on board. “The majority of our original Staff, Admins and Moderation team joined us after Kat.cr went down – which is something we’re very proud of. This shows the loyalty, dedication and real love for KAT that we all share,” The KATcr team told TorrentFreak. At the original KAT, site administrators and crew were clearly separated from those who technically and financially ran the place. This means that the people in charge of KATcr didn’t have access to the original code and data. Still, they managed to put together bits and pieces to make it look identical, so former KAT users should feel right at home. The new Katcr.co Perhaps just as importantly, many of the site’s renowned uploaders are also back. As a result, the site will be populated with a lot of fresh content right from the start. “We have all our major uploaders on board and they continued to share tirelessly even before the torrent engines returned. The torrent community can continue to expect to see uploads from all the names they know and trust,” the KATcr crew says. Uploading to KATcr Putting everything together took quite a bit of time, but the team wanted to make sure that everything is secure, which they are confident is the case now. “In order to keep our members safe we chose to rebuild and keep only safe elements. Despite the fact that a rebuild took longer, the safety of our community comes first,” the KATcr crew told us. While some might see it as a bold move to relaunch a site whose alleged operators are still wanted by the U.S. Government, the current staff sees no major legal issues ahead. They point out that the site has a proper DMCA takedown procedure, just like YouTube, adding that they don’t store any copyrighted material on the site’s servers. “KAT is a community-based forum and a torrent search engine. It’s the heart of who we are and that will never change. Despite opinions to the contrary, torrents are not illegal and we do not host any content. “So long as Kickass Torrents continues to operate to the absolute letter of the law then we are most certainly not conducting criminal activities,” they note. In a similar vein, the KATcr crew believes that the original operators of the site will walk free. “We strongly believe the investigation carried out by Homeland Security and the IRS is unlawful in basis, targeting a foreign citizen and prosecuting them under US law. We have every confidence in the outcome of the pending legal action,” they say. Over the past months, many KAT copies and mirrors emerged claiming to be the real reincarnation. In reality, the original site is still gone, but with many old staffers and uploaders onboard, KATcr might have some legs. source:Torrentfreak

Hello. Since the Xmas is coming we have decided to open the sign ups. Invites are disabled, you will see them when we close the sign ups... Dont forget to open your present when the times come. Many surprises are waiting for you. The staff wishes you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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Click Here if you want to get Lottery Tickets."iPT - The Big Kahuna Lottery!!" Contest Rules

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Latest Version: 4.1.0.01) Download TD Browser Installer.2) Open it, Select your OS from the list.3) Install it and Enjoy anonymous browsing the net IMPORTANT: If TD Browser is not working for you, please disable firewall and anti virus and try again.Note: Unfortunately we don't have a Mac version and there will not be one.RegardsTD Team

2016.12.12 - FREELEECH ENDED

Hello guys We inform users that they should already know [LOL] that exists in your profile options To view the state of your torrents, ratios, seedtime, send, receive, etc. To do this simply click on your NICK, scroll down and see a bar with options

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Hello TmGians, Hope you guys are doing good & enjoying releases from TmG In the wake of recent changes made in the site, there have been a lot of queries regarding ratio & how upload credit can be increased for downloading torrents in future. While looking for solutions to those problems, we came to know that most of the users are not making use of SEED-BONUS which is a gift from TmGHuB to its users for preserving the principle of P2P - Sharing Back What You Take This is How it Works : For every torrent you keep seeding on your torrent client, the system reward you with 1 point every hour. For Eg, If you have 5 torrents & you kept it for seeding, the system adds 5 x 1 = 5 points to your account per hour.It works even if nobody is downloading from you. Once you have enough SEED-BONUS, you can use it to purchase upload credit which helps you improve your ratio & you don't have to worry about getting your account pruned CLICK HERE to view your current SEED-BONUS TmGHub is purely ratio based site. Fail to keep minimum ratio will result in a Permanent Ban!RegardsTmGHuB Staff

Guys, Please check out the forums for the non-connection fix. We'll be going through the members list and letting those who aren't connectable know that there is a fix and they must get that corrected. http://hdme.eu/forums.php?action=viewtopic&topicid=8004&page=plast#last The main purpose of the site is file sharing. If you snatch a torrent and no one can snatch it from you we have a problem.

Due to Market FL pot being full once again, we just enabled Global FL for a week..Happy Leeching and Enjoy

Hello my lovelies! It is that time again. We will have our annual Xmas/NY lottery named iPT's The Big Kahuna Lottery. We would like as many posters as you can come up with. We will rotate them like we did last time. Winners will get a nice prize. Lottery Prizes will be: > Lottery deadline: 15th of January 2017 >>>> Lottery Poster deadline: December 14th as Lottery begins on December 15th. Previous lottery posters, This is just an example, come up with unique designs.

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