New Zealand's ruling National Party must pay $600,000 for infringing the copyrights of Eminem's track "Lose Yourself" in a 2014 election spot. The ruling is significant, not least because the party's political leader at the time was Kim Dotcom's nemesis John Key. In recent years, New Zealand has been the center stage of the largest copyright battle in Internet history; the criminal prosecution of Megaupload and several of its former employees. In 2012, the country’s law enforcement officials helped to bring down the file-sharing site, including a military-style raid on its founder, Kim Dotcom. While the Megaupload case is still ongoing, a separate copyright battle in New Zealand came to a conclusion this week. In this case, the country’s leading National Party was the accused. In 2014 the party of former Prime Minister and Kim Dotcom nemesis John Key was sued for copyright infringement by Eminem’s publisher Eight Mile Style. In an advertising spot for the General Election campaign, the party used a song heavily inspired by the track “Lose Yourself.” A blatant copyright infringement, they argued. This week the High Court agreed with the publisher ruling that the ad indeed infringed on their copyright. The National Party must now pay a total of $600,000 (415,000 USD) including damages and interest, NZ Herald reports. Recognizing the irony, Kim Dotcom swiftly took the matter to Twitter. He launched a poll asking who’s guilty of copyright infringement, him or the National Party? The results are, as expected, in his favor. Lose Yourself? Dotcom sees the matter as something the old government is responsible for and he has more faith in the current leadership. “All I can say is that the irony of this is hilarious and that Karma has finally caught up with the corrupt !former! National government. Honest people are now running New Zealand and the courts will be busy dealing with the crimes committed by the last government,” Dotcom informs us. The National Party didn’t simply use the song without paying for it. They actually sought professional advice before starting the campaign and licensed a track called Eminem Esque, which is the one they used in the ad. While the party hoped to avoid more expensive licensing fees by using the knock-off song, the High Court ruled that the similarities between Lose Yourself and Eminem Esque are so significant that it breached copyright. And indeed, the music used in the ad campaign below is quite similar to the original Eminem track. National Party president Peter Goodfellow is disappointed with the outcome and stresses that the party did not act flagrantly and properly licensed the song that was used. “The music was licensed with one of New Zealand’s main industry copyright bodies, the Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society. Being licensed and available for purchase, and having taken advice from our suppliers, the party believed the purchase was legal.” The fact that the Party sought advice and licensed the knock-off track was taken into account. The High Court didn’t award any additional damages, but nonetheless, the copyright infringement claims stuck. The other camp was more positive about the outcome. Adam Simpson, who represented Eminem’s publisher, described the ruling as a win for musicians and a warning to those who infringe on their rights. “The ruling clarifies and confirms the rights of artists and songwriters. It sets a major precedent in New Zealand and will be influential in Australia, the UK and elsewhere,” Simpson said. https://torrentfreak.com/lose-yourself-national-party-guilty-of-eminem-copyright-infringement-171025/

A scandal is emerging in Russia after several officials of Russian site-blocking body Rozcomnadzor were charged with fraud. Those arrested include the watchdog's spokesman and top lawyer, both of whom have been placed under house arrest. It's alleged that the telecoms authority 'employed' ghost staff whose salaries were actually paid to existing employees, on top of their own money. Over the past several years, Rozcomnadzor has become a highly controversial government body in Russia. With responsibility for ordering web-blockades against sites the country deems disruptive, it’s effectively Russia’s online censorship engine. In total, Rozcomnadzor has ordered the blocking of more than 82,000 sites. Within that total, at least 4,000 have been rendered inaccessible on copyright grounds, with an additional 41,000 innocent platforms blocked as collateral damage. This massive over-blocking has been widely criticized in Russia but until now, Rozcomnadzor has appeared pretty much untouchable. However, a scandal is now engulfing the organization after at least four key officials were charged with fraud offenses. News that something was potentially amiss began leaking out two weeks ago, when Russian publication Vedomosti reported on a court process in which the initials of the defendants appeared to coincide with officials at Rozcomnadzor. The publication suspected that three men were involved; Roskomnadzor spokesman Vadim Ampelonsky, head of the legal department Boris Yedidin, and Alexander Veselchakov, who acts as an advisor to the head of the department monitoring radio frequencies. The prosecution’s case indicated that the defendants were involved in “fraud committed by an organized group either on an especially large scale or entailing the deprivation of citizen’s rights.” Indeed, no further details were made available, with the head of Rozcomnadzor Alexander Zharov claiming he knew nothing about a criminal case and refusing to answer questions. It later transpired that four employees had been charged with fraud, including Anastasiya Zvyagintseva, who acts as the general director of CRFC, an agency under the control of Rozcomnadzor. According to Kommersant, Zvyagintseva’s involvement is at the core of the matter. She claims to have been forced to put “ghost employees” on the payroll, whose salaries were then paid to existing employees in order to increase their salaries. The investigation into the scandal certainly runs deep. It’s reported that FSB officers have been spying on Rozcomnadzor officials for six months, listening to their phone conversations, monitoring their bank accounts, and even watching the ATM machines they used. Local media reports indicate that the illegal salary scheme ran from 2012 until February 2017 and involved some 20 million rubles ($347,000) of illegal payments. These were allegedly used to retain ‘valuable’ employees when their regular salaries were not lucrative enough to keep them at the site-blocking body. While Zvyagintseva has been released pending trial, Ampelonsky, Yedidin, and Veselchakov have been placed under house arrest by the Chertanovsky Court of Moscow until November 7. Rozcomnadzor’s website is currently inaccessible. https://torrentfreak.com/russian-site-blocking-chiefs-under-investigation-for-fraud-171024/

The Pirate Bay's .SE domain name is back in action. The iconic domain was deactivated last week and no longer forwarded to the torrent site. Today the domain is reregistered and is now awaiting the Supreme Court ruling in the ongoing domain name battle. Last week The Pirate Bay’s .SE domain name expired and, soon after, it was deactivated. As a result, many people could no longer use their old bookmarks, which traditionally pointed them to the most recent domain of the notorious torrent site. This appeared to mark the end of this historic domain but today it’s clear that this is not the case. For the past few hours, Thepiratebay.se has been operating as usual again, directing visitors to the current .org domain. A quick look at the Whois information shows that the domain has been reactivated and the registration updated to October next year. This means that it’s safe, at least for a while. Thepiratebay.se back in action At the time of writing it’s unclear whether the Pirate Bay listed the deactivation or if this was done on behalf of the Swedish Court of Appeal. In 2013, a local anti-piracy group filed a motion to have it seized. This resulted in a lengthy legal battle where the Swedish Court of Appeal eventually ruled that The Pirate Bay’s domain had to be confiscated and forfeited to the state. The forfeiture has yet to take place, though, as the case is still pending at the Supreme Court. Because of this, the Pirate Bay’s owners are not allowed to changethe domain details, which may be why it expired initially. However, without re-registering it, the domain would be released to the public again. This means that outsiders could pick it up, which isn’t supposed to happen, and this is likely why it’s now active again. The Pirate Bay has yet to comment on the domain issue. When we hear from the team this article will be updated accordingly. https://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bays-se-domain-is-back-in-action-171024/

A federal court in Virginia has granted Megaupload's request to keep the cases filed by the music and movie companies on hold until April next year. Since all crucial data on Megaupload's servers was preserved earlier this year, the MPAA and RIAA have no objections against the stay, which was triggered by slow progress in the criminal case. More than half a decade has passed since Megaupload was shut down and it’s still unclear how the criminal proceedings will unfold. Aside from Andrus Nomm’s plea deal, progress in the criminal proceedings has been slow. Earlier this year there was some movement when the New Zealand High Court ruled that Kim Dotcom and his former colleagues can be extradited to the US. This extradition would not be on copyright grounds, but for conspiracy to defraud. Following the ruling, Dotcom and his former colleagues quickly announced they would take the matter to the Court of Appeal. This process is still pending and may take several more months to complete. While all parties await the outcome, the criminal case in the United States remains pending. The same goes for the civil cases launched by the MPAA and RIAA in 2014. Since the civil cases may influence the criminal proceedings, Megaupload’s legal team previously managed to put these cases on hold, and last week they requested another extension. This is not the first time that such a request had been made. There have been several extensions already. At the time of the last request, there were concerns that the long delays could result in the destruction of evidence, as some of Megaupload’s hard drives were starting to fail. However, after the parties agreed on a solution to back-up and restore the files, this is no longer an issue. “With the preservation order in place, and there being no other objection, Defendant Megaupload hereby moves the Court to enter the attached proposed order, continuing the stay in this case for an additional six months,” Megaupload’s legal team informed the court this week. Without any objections from the MPAA and RIAA, U.S. District Court Judge Liam O’Grady swiftly granted Megaupload’s request to stay both lawsuits until April next year. To be continued. Order to stay https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-and-riaas-megaupload-lawsuits-remain-on-hold-171023/

Many thousands of alleged movie pirates in Sweden have been hit with demands for cash settlements in recent weeks. The 'fines', which amount to around $550 each, are being sent by Njord Law, a law firm acting on behalf of international copyright trolls active in several different countries, including the United States. In 2016, mass ‘copyright-trolling’ hit Sweden for the first time. An organization calling itself Spridningskollen (Distribution Check) claimed its new initiative would save the entertainment industries and educate the masses. Following a huge backlash, however, the operation shut up shop and retreated, tail between its legs. But for those who expected the trolls to disappear altogether, bad news was just around the corner. In February 2017, Danish law firm Njord Law was found to be at the helm of a new troll operation targeting the subscribers of several ISPs, including Telia, Tele2 and Bredbandsbolaget. Some 42-pages of court documents revealed that thousands of IP addresses had been harvested, potentially linking to thousands of subscribers. After receiving permission from the courts to obtain the personal details of alleged pirates, things went a little quiet. However, according to local news outlet IDG, the floodgates have now been opened, with several thousand ISP subscribers receiving cash demands from Njord Law in recent weeks. “We have sent out a few thousand letters, but we have been given the right to obtain information behind many more IP addresses that we are waiting to receive from the telecom operators. So there are more, ” lawyer Jeppe Brogaard Clausen told the publication. Indeed, an indication of the scale of the operation can be found in the order obtained to target customers of ISP Telia. In that batch alone the court granted permission for Njord Law to obtain the identities behind 25,000 IP addresses. Earlier this year, Clausen said that after identifying the subscribers he wanted to “enter into non-aggressive dialogue” with them. As we predicted, this apparently friendly introduction would simply lead to inevitable demands for cash. “Have you, or other people with access to the aforementioned IP address, such as children living at home, viewed or tried to watch [a pirate movie] at the specified time?” Njord Law now writes in its letters to alleged pirates. “If so, the case can be terminated by paying 4,500 SEK [$550].” According to IDG, lots of movies are involved, both from local and international distributors. Earlier this year, CELL, IT, London Has Fallen, Mechanic: Resurrection, Criminal and September of Shiraz were named as possible titles. The inclusion of these titles come as no surprise since several have turned up in similar trolling cases all over Europe and the United States. In common with schemes elsewhere, BitTorrent tracking was carried out by MaverickEye, a German-based company that is part of the notorious Guardaley trolling operation. Like most ‘trolling’ cases, figures on how many people are paying up in Sweden are hard to come by. Clausen won’t say how many have parted with cash, but the lawyer says that 60% of the letters have elicited some kind of response. In previous similar projects in the UK, around a fifth of targets paid some sort of settlement, with no contested cases reaching the courts. Njord Law insists, however, that those who don’t pay in Sweden may have to face the legal system. “Yes, we will [go to court],” says Clausen. “We wish to resolve matters as much as possible through education and dialogue without the assistance of the court though. It is very expensive both for the rights holders and for plaintiffs if we go to court.” While it’s impossible to predict how these cases will go, the usual tactic is to attack the low-hanging fruit first. People who admit some form of guilt can expect the most pressure while those who deny the allegations flat out (subscribers aren’t necessarily infringers) are likely to be placed in a file to be dealt with last, if at all. https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-trolls-hit-thousands-of-swedish-pirates-with-550-fines-171023/

The Czech Pirate Party has booked a significant win in local parliamentary elections. With more than ten percent of the total vote, the Pirates became the third largest party in the country, entering parliament with 22 seats. With its newly gained power, the party hopes to overhaul copyright legislation, fight corruption, and abolish Internet censorship, among other things. The Czech Pirates have made quite a name for themselves in recent years. The political party previously took on a local anti-piracy outfit by launching their own movie download sites, making the point that linking is not a crime. The bold move resulted in a criminal investigation, but the case was eventually dropped after it was deemed that the Pirates acted in accordance with EU law. In the political arena, the Czech Pirate Party booked several successes as well. In Parliamentary elections, however, the party never managed to beat the required threshold. Until this weekend. With 10.79% of the total vote, the Pirates won 22 seats in the national parliament. Not just that, they also became the third largest political party in the country, where more than 30 parties participated in the elections. The Czech Republic becomes the fourth country where a Pirate Party is represented in the national parliament, following Sweden, Germany, and Iceland, which is quite an achievement. “It is the best result of any Pirate Party in history and gives us a great mandate to transform the dynamics of Czech politics. At the same time, we understand this as a huge responsibility towards the voters and the Pirate movement as a whole,” Tomáš Vymazal, one of the new Members of Parliament, tells TorrentFreak. The Pirates (photo via) While there were some celebrations after the election result came in, the Czech Pirate Party is moving full steam ahead. The twenty-two newly elected members have already held their first meeting, discussing how to get the most out of their negotiations with other parties. “The negotiation team has been established and the club’s chairman was elected. We’ll now need to set up our offices, hire assistants and distribute specific responsibilities among the club,” Vymazal says. “One of the first issues we will open up a discussion about in the parliament will be the fixing of a historic anti-corruption bill.” The bill in question makes sure that every contract the state or a state-owned business enters into is put on the record. However, the previous parliament introduced several exceptions and as a result, many of the money flows remain hidden from the public. Like other Pirate parties, the Czech branch is by no means a single issue outfit. The party has a broad vision which it distilled to a twenty point program. In addition to fighting corruption, this includes tax reform and increasing teachers’ salaries, for example. More classical pirate themes are also on the agenda of course. The Pirate Party wants to overhaul the country’s copyright legislation, stop internet censorship, and put an end to cell phone tracking. In addition, the growing of marijuana for personal use should be allowed. With the backing of hundreds of thousands of Czechs, these and other issues will certainly be on the political agenda during the years to come. It’s now up to the Pirates to make them a reality. “We must do a very good job to successfully establish the Pirate Party in Czech politics and deliver on the promises we made to the voters,” Vymazal says. https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-wins-big-in-czech-parliament-elections-171023/

The top 10 most downloaded movies on BitTorrent are in again. 'War for the Planet of the Apes' tops the chart this week, followed by ‘Annabelle Creation'. 'Spider-Man: Homecoming' completes the top three. This week we have three newcomers in our chart. War for the Planet of the Apes is the most downloaded movie again. The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise. RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart. THIS WEEK’S MOST DOWNLOADED MOVIES ARE: Movie Rank Rank last week Movie name IMDb Rating / Trailer Most downloaded movies via torrents 1 (1) War for the Planet of the Apes 7.8 / trailer 2 (6) Annabelle Creation (Subbed HDRip) 6.7 / trailer 3 (3) Spider-Man: Homecoming 7.8 / trailer 4 (2) The Dark Tower 5.9 / trailer 5 (…) Atomic Blonde (Subbed HDRip) 7.0 / trailer 6 (4) American Made (Subbed HDrip) 7.3 / trailer 7 (…) Cars 3 7.0 / trailer 8 (5) Baby Driver 8.0 / trailer 9 (…) Kingsman: The Golden Circle (HDTS) 7.2 / trailer 10 (7) Wonder Woman 8.2 / trailer

The CCIA, which represents global tech firms including Amazon, Google, and Netflix, is cautioning the US Government against blaming open source media players such as Kodi for streaming box piracy. Any enforcement actions should be aimed at those who misuse the software for infringing means, not those who code it. At the beginning of October, several entertainment industry groups shared their piracy concerns with the US Government’s Trade Representative (USTR). Aside from pointing towards traditional websites, pirate streaming boxes were also brought up, by the MPAA among others. “An emerging global threat is streaming piracy which is enabled by piracy devices preloaded with software to illicitly stream movies and television programming and a burgeoning ecosystem of infringing add-ons,” the MPAA noted. This week the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which includes members such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Netflix, notes that the USTR should be careful not to blame an open source media player such as Kodi, for the infringing actions of others. CCIA wrote a rebuttal clarifying that Kodi and similar open source players are not the problem here. “Another example of commenters raising concerns about generalized technology is the MPAA’s characterization of customizable, open-source set-top boxes utilizing the Kodi multimedia player application along with websites that allegedly ‘enable one-click installation of modified software onto set-top boxes or other internet-connected devices’,” CCIA writes. While the MPAA itself also clearly mentioned that “Kodi is not itself unlawful,” CCIA stresses that any enforcement actions should be aimed at those who are breaking the law. The real targets include vendors who sell streaming boxes pre-loaded with infringing addons. “These enforcement activities should focus on the infringers themselves, however, not a general purpose technology, such as an operating system for set-top boxes, which may be used in both lawful and unlawful ways. “Open-source software designed for operating a home electronics device is unquestionably legitimate, and capable of substantial non-infringing uses,” CCIA adds in its cautionary letter the USTR. While the MPAA’s submission was not trying to characterize Kodi itself as illegal, it did call out TVAddons.ag as a “piracy add-on repository.” The new incarnation of TVAddons wasn’t happy with this label and previously scolded the movie industry group for its comments, pointing out that it only received a handful of DMCA takedown notices in recent years. “…in the entire history of TV ADDONS, XBMC HUB and OffshoreGit, we only received a total of about five DMCA notices in all; two of which were completely bogus. None of which came from a MPAA affiliate.” While it’s obvious to most that Kodi isn’t the problem, as CCIA is highlighting, to many people it’s still unclear where the line between infringing and non-infringing is drawn. Lawsuits, including those against TVAddons and TickBox, are expected to bring more clarity. — CCIA’s full submission is available here (pdf). https://torrentfreak.com/tech-giants-warn-kodi-scapegoating-171022/

The music industry is doing its best to shutter YouTube converter sites and the RIAA recently reported several of them to the US Government. This didn't sit well with digital rights group EFF, who wrote a reply stressing that the music group is twisting the law, as stream ripping sites are not by definition illegal. Free music is easy to find nowadays. Just head over to YouTube and you can find millions of tracks including many of the most recent releases. While some artists happily share their work, the major record labels don’t want tracks to leak outside YouTube’s ecosystem. For this reason, they want YouTube to MP3 rippers shut down. Earlier this month, the RIAA sent its overview of “notorious markets” to the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), highlighting several of these sites and asking for help. “The overall popularity of these sites and the staggering volume of traffic it attracts evidences the enormous damage being inflicted on the U.S. record industry,” the RIAA wrote, calling out Mp3juices.cc, Convert2mp3.net, Savefrom.net, Ytmp3.cc, Convertmp3.io, Flvto.biz, and 2conv.com as the most popular offenders. This position is shared by many other music industry groups. They see stream ripping as the largest piracy threat online. After shutting down YouTube-MP3, they hope to topple other sites as well, ideally with the backing of the US Government. However, not everyone shares the belief that stream ripping equals copyright infringement. In a rebuttal, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) informs the USTR that the RIAA is trying to twist the law in its favor. Not all stream ripping sites are facilitating copyright infringement by definition, the EFF argues. “RIAA’s discussion of ‘stream-ripping’ websites misstates copyright law. Websites that simply allow users to extract the audio track from a user-selected online video are not ‘illegal sites’ and are not liable for copyright infringement, unless they engage in additional conduct that meets the definition of infringement,” the EFF writes. Flvto While some people may use these sites to ‘pirate’ tracks there are also legitimate purposes, the digital rights group notes. Some creators specifically allow others to download and modify their work, for example, and in other cases ripping can be seen as fair use. “There exists a vast and growing volume of online video that is licensed for free downloading and modification, or contains audio tracks that are not subject to copyright,” the EFF stresses. “Moreover, many audio extractions qualify as non-infringing fair uses under copyright. Providing a service that is capable of extracting audio tracks for these lawful purposes is itself lawful, even if some users infringe.” The fact that these sites generate revenue from advertising doesn’t make them illegal either. While there are some issues that could make a site liable, such as distributing infringing content to third parties, the EFF argues that many of the sites identified by the RIAA are not clearly involved in such activities. Instead of solely relying on the characterizations of the RIAA, the US Government should judge these sites independently, in accordance with the law. “USTR must apply U.S. law as it is, not as particular industry organizations wish it to be. Accordingly, it is inappropriate to describe ‘stream-ripping’ sites as engaging in or facilitating infringement. That logic would discourage U.S. firms from providing many forms of useful, lawful technology that processes or interacts with copyrighted work in digital form, to the detriment of U.S. trade,” the EFF concludes. It is worth highlighting that most sites the RIAA mentioned specifically advertise themselves as YouTube converters. While this violates YouTube’s Terms of Service, something the streaming platform isn’t happy with, it doesn’t automatically classify them as infringing services. Ideally, the RIAA and other music industry group would like YouTube to shut down these sites but if that doesn’t happen, more lawsuits may follow in the future. Then, the claims from both sides can be properly tested in court. The full EFF response is available here (pdf). In addition to the stream ripping comments, the digital rights group also defends CDN providers such as Cloudflare, reverse proxies, and domain registrars from MPAA and RIAA piracy complaints.

Today we bring you the next episode of the Steal This Show podcast, discussing renegade media and the latest file-sharing and copyright news. In this episode, we talk to Diani Barreto from the Berlin Bureau of ExposeFacs. If you enjoy this episode, consider becoming a patron and getting involved with the show. Check out Steal This Show’s Patreon campaign: support us and get all kinds of fantastic benefits! In this episode we meet Diani Barreto from the Berlin Bureau of ExposeFacs. Launched in June 2014, ExposeFacts.org supports and encourages whistleblowers to disclose information that citizens need to make truly informed decisions in a democracy. ExposeFacts aims to shed light on concealed activities that are relevant to human rights, corporate malfeasance, the environment, civil liberties and war. — Steal This Show aims to release bi-weekly episodes featuring insiders discussing copyright and file-sharing news. It complements our regular reporting by adding more room for opinion, commentary, and analysis. The guests for our news discussions will vary, and we’ll aim to introduce voices from different backgrounds and persuasions. In addition to news, STS will also produce features interviewing some of the great innovators and minds. Host: Jamie King Guest: Diani Barreto Produced by Jamie King Edited & Mixed by Riley Byrne Original Music by David Triana Web Production by Siraje Amarniss https://torrentfreak.com/steal-show-s03e09-learning-love-panopticon/

Cloudflare has responded to the repeated criticism of entertainment industry groups, which accuse the company of helping pirate sites. The CDN provider informs the U.S. Government that it operates in accordance with the law and that the complaints bring nothing new to the table. A few weeks ago several copyright holder groups sent their annual “Notorious Markets” complaints to the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). While the recommendations usually include well-known piracy sites such as The Pirate Bay, third-party services are increasingly mentioned. MPAA and RIAA, for example, wrote that Cloudflare frustrates enforcement efforts by helping pirate sites to “hide”. The CDN provider is not happy with these characterizations and this week submitted a rebuttal. Cloudflare’s General Counsel Doug Kramer says that the company was surprised to see these mentions. Not only because they “distort” reality, but also because they are pretty much identical to those leveled last year. “Most surprising is that their comments were basically the same complaints they filed in 2016 and contain the same mistakes and distortions that we pointed out in our rebuttal comments from October, 2016.” “Simply repeating the same mischaracterizations for a second year in a row does not convert them into facts, so we are compelled to reiterate our objections,” Kramer adds (pdf). There is indeed quite a bit of overlap between the submissions from both years. In fact, several sections are copied word for word, such as the RIAA’s allegation below. “In addition, more sites are now employing services of Cloudflare, a content delivery network and distributed domain name server service. BitTorrent sites, like many other pirate sites, are increasing [sic] turning to Cloudflare because routing their site through Cloudflare obfuscates the IP address of the actual hosting provider, masking the location of the site.” The same can be said about the MPAA’s submission, which includes a lot of the same comments and sentences as last year. That wouldn’t be much of a problem if the information was correct, but according to Cloudflare, that’s not the case. The two industry groups claim that the CDN provider makes it more difficult to track where pirate sites are hosted. However, Cloudflare argues the opposite. Both RIAA and MPAA are part of the “Trusted Reporter” program and use it frequently, Cloudflare points out. This program allows rightsholders to easily obtain the actual IP-addresses of Cloudflare-hosted websites that engage in widespread copyright infringement. Most importantly, according to Cloudflare, is that the company follows the letter of the law. “Cloudflare does not make the process of enforcing intellectual property rights online any harder — or any easier. We follow all applicable laws and regulations,” Cloudflare explained in its submission last year. In its 2017 rebuttal, the company reiterates this position once again. Kramer also points to a recent blog post from CEO Matthew Prince, which discusses free speech and censorship issues. The message is that vigilante justice is not the answer to piracy, and all relevant stakeholders should get together to discuss how to handle these issues going forward. For now, however, the USTR should disregard the comments regarding Cloudflare as irrelevant and inaccurate, the company argues. “We trust that USTR will once again agree with Cloudflare that complaints implying that Cloudflare is aiding illegal activities have no place whatsoever in USTR’s Notorious Markets inquiry. It would seem to distract from and dilute the message of that report to focus on companies that are working to make the internet more cybersecure,” Kramer concludes. https://torrentfreak.com/cloudflare-counters-mpaa-and-riaas-rehashed-piracy-complaints-171020/

Two US senators have written to Apple CEO Tim Cook asking why the company reportedly removed VPN apps from the company's store in China. "If these reports are true," the senators wrote, "we are concerned that Apple may be enabling the Chinese government's censorship and surveillance of the Internet." As part of what is now clearly a crackdown on Great Firewall-evading tools and services, during the summer Chinese government pressure reached technology giant Apple. On or around July 29, Apple removed many of the most-used VPN applications from its Chinese app store. In a short email from the company, VPN providers were informed that VPN applications are considered illegal in China. “We are writing to notify you that your application will be removed from the China App Store because it includes content that is illegal in China, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines,” Apple informed the affected VPNs. Apple’s email to VPN providers Now, in a letter sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook, US senators Ted Cruz and Patrick Leahy express concern at the move by Apple, noting that if reports of the software removals are true, the company could be assisting China’s restrictive approach to the Internet. “VPNs allow users to access the uncensored Internet in China and other countries that restrict Internet freedom. If these reports are true, we are concerned that Apple may be enabling the Chines government’s censorship and surveillance of the Internet.” Describing China as a country with “an abysmal human rights record, including with respect to the rights of free expression and free access to information, both online and offline”, the senators cite Reporters Without Borders who previously labeled the country as “the enemy of the Internet”. While senators Cruz and Leahy go on to praise Apple for its contribution to the spread of information, they criticize the company for going along with the wishes of the Chinese government as it seeks to suppress knowledge and communication. “While Apple’s many contributions to the global exchange of information are admirable, removing VPN apps that allow individuals in China to evade the Great Firewall and access the Internet privately does not enable people in China to ‘speak up’,” the senators write. “To the contrary, if Apple complies with such demands from the Chinese government it inhibits free expression for users across China, particularly in light of the Cyberspace Administration of China’s new regulations targeting online anonymity.” In January, a notice published by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that the government had indeed launched a 14-month campaign to crack down on local ‘unauthorized’ Internet platforms. This means that all VPN services have to be pre-approved by the Government if they want to operate in China. And the aggression against VPNs and their providers didn’t stop there. In September, a Chinese man who sold Great Firewall-evading VPN software via a website was sentenced to nine months in prison by a Chinese court. Just weeks later, a software developer who set up a VPN for his own use but later sold access to the service was arrested and detained for three days. This emerging pattern is clearly a concern for the senators who are now demanding that Tim Cook responds to ten questions (pdf), including whether Apple raised concerns about China’s VPN removal demands and details of how many apps were removed from its store. The senators also want to see copies of any pro-free speech statements Apple has made in China. Whether the letter will make any difference on the ground in China remains to be seen, but the public involvement of the senators and technology giant Apple is certain to thrust censorship and privacy further into the public eye. https://torrentfreak.com/us-senators-ask-apple-why-vpn-apps-were-removed-in-china-171020/

Game developer and publisher Epic is taking cheaters to court over copyright infringement, but it doesn't stop there. In a new case filed with a California, the company is also suing a man for distributing a cheat that's actually a Bitcoin miner. A few weeks ago, Epic Games released Fortnite’s free-to-play “Battle Royale” game mode for the PC and other platforms, generating massive interest among gamers. The release also attracted attention from thousands of cheaters, many of whom were subsequently banned. In addition, Epic Games went a step further by taking several cheaters to court over copyright infringement. This week the North Carolina-based game developer continued its a war against cheaters. In a new lawsuit, it targets two other cheaters who promoted their hacks through YouTube videos. One of the defendants is a Swedish resident, Mr. Josefson. He created a cheat and promoted it in various videos, adding instructions on how to download and install it. In common with the previous defendants, he is being sued for copyright infringement. The second cheater listed in the complaint, a Russian man named Mr. Yakovenko, is more unique. This man also promoted his Fortnite cheats through a series of YouTube videos, but they weren’t very effective. When Epic downloaded the ‘cheat’ to see how it works, all they got was a Bitcoin miner. “Epic downloaded the purported cheat from the links provided in Yakovenko’s YouTube videos. While the ‘cheat’ does not appear to be a functional Fortnite cheat, it functions as a bitcoin miner that infects the user’s computer with a virus that causes the user’s computer to mine bitcoin for the benefit of an unknown third party,” the complaint reads. Epic ‘cheat’ Despite the non-working cheat, Epic Games maintains that Yakovenko created a cheat for Fortnite’s Battle Royale game mode, pointing to a YouTube video he posted last month. “The First Yakovenko video and associated post contained instructions on how to download and install the cheat and showed full screen gameplay using the purported cheat,” the complaint reads. All the videos have since been removed following takedown notices from Epic. Through the lawsuit, the game developer now hopes to get compensation for the damages it suffered. In addition to the copyright infringement claims the two men are also accused of trademark infringement, unfair competition, and breach of contract. There’s little doubt that Epic Games is doing its best to hold cheaters accountable. However, the problem is not easy to contain. A simple search for Fortnite Hack or Fortnite Cheat still yields tens of thousands of results, with new videos being added continuously. — A copy of the full complaint against Josefson and Yakovenko is available here (pdf). https://torrentfreak.com/epic-games-sues-man-over-bitcoin-mining-fortnite-cheat-171019/

An anti-piracy outfit, whose members include major international studios and record labels, has been welcomed as a member of the organization with overall responsibility for Denmark's top-level domain. Rights Alliance, which is behind the blocking of dozens of leading torrent and streaming sites, says it wants to create a "more secure internet" for companies doing business online. All around the world, content creators and rightsholders continue to protest against the unauthorized online distribution of copyrighted content. While pirating end-users obviously share some of the burden, the main emphasis has traditionally been placed on the shuttering of illicit sites, whether torrent, streaming, or hosting based. Over time, however, sites have become more prevalent and increasingly resilient, leaving the music, movie and publishing industries to play a frustrating game of whac-a-mole. With this in mind, their focus has increasingly shifted towards Internet gatekeepers, including ISPs and bodies with influence over domain availability. While most of these efforts take place via cooperation or legal action, there’s regularly conflict when Hollywood, for example, wants a particular domain rendered inaccessible or the music industry wants pirates kicked off the Internet. As a result, there’s nearly always a disconnect, with copyright holders on one side and Internet technology companies worried about mission creep on the other. In Denmark, however, those lines have just been blurred in the most intriguing way possible after an infamous anti-piracy outfit joined an organization with significant control over the Internet in the country. RettighedsAlliancen (or Rights Alliance as it’s more commonly known) is an anti-piracy group which counts some of the most powerful local and international movie companies among its members. It also operates on behalf of IFPI and by extension, most of the world’s major recording labels. The group has been involved in dozens of legal processes over the years against file-sharers and file-sharing sites, most recently fighting for and winning ISP blockadesagainst most major pirate portals including The Pirate Bay, RARBG, Torrentz, and many more. In a somewhat surprising new announcement, the group has revealed it’s become the latest member of DIFO, the Danish Internet Forum (DIFO) which “works for a secure and accessible Internet” under the top-level .DK domain. Indeed, DIFO has overall responsibility for Danish internet infrastructure. “For DIFO it is important to have a strong link to the Danish internet community. Therefore, we are very pleased that the Alliance wishes to be part of the association,” DIFO said in a statement. Rights Alliance will be DIFO’s third new member this year but uniquely it will get the opportunity to represent the interests of more than 100,000 Danish and international rightholders from inside an influential Internet-focused organization. Looking at DIFO’s membership, Rights Alliance certainly stands out as unusual. The majority of the members are made up of IT-based organizations, such as the Internet Industry Association, The Association of Open Source Suppliers and DKRegistrar, the industry association for Danish domain registrars. A meeting around a table with these players and their often conflicting interests is likely to be an experience for all involved. However, all parties seem more than happy with the new partnership. “We want to help create a more secure internet for companies that invest in doing business online, and for users to be safe, so combating digital crime is a key and shared goal,” says Rights Alliance chief, Maria Fredenslund. “I am therefore looking forward to the future cooperation with DIFO.” Only time will tell how this partnership will play out but if common ground can be found, it’s certainly possible that the anti-piracy scene in Denmark could step up a couple of gears in the future. https://torrentfreak.com/anti-piracy-group-joins-internet-organization-that-controls-top-level-domain-171019/

Copyright holders have now asked Google to remove more than 3,000,000,000 allegedly infringing links from its search engine results since it began publishing records. A new milestone for sure, but not one celebrated anywhere. While Google sees it as confirmation that the DMCA process is working, copyright holders still have plenty of work to do. Copyright holders continue to flood Google with DMCA takedown requests, asking the company to remove “pirate links” from its search results. In recent years the number of reported URLs has exploded, surging to unprecedented heights. Since Google first started to report the volume of takedown requests in its Transparency Report, the company has been asked to remove more than three billion allegedly infringing search results. The frequency at which these URLs are reported has increased over the years and at the moment roughly three million ‘pirate’ URLs are submitted per day. The URLs are sent in by major rightsholders including members of the BPI, RIAA, and various major Hollywood studios. They target a wide variety of sites, over 1.3 million, but a few dozen ‘repeat offenders’ are causing the most trouble. File-hosting service 4shared.com currently tops the list of most-targeted domains with 66 million URLs, followed by the now-defunct MP3 download site MP3toys.xyz and Rapidgator.net, with 51 and 28 million URLs respectively. 3 billion URLs Interestingly, the high volume of takedown notices is used as an argument for and against the DMCA process. While Google believes that the millions of reported URLs per day are a sign that the DMCA takedown process is working correctly, rightsholders believe the volumes are indicative of an unbeatable game of whack-a-mole. According to some copyright holders, the takedown efforts do little to seriously combat piracy. Various industry groups have therefore asked governments and lawmakers for broad revisions. Among other things they want advanced technologies and processes to ensure that infringing content doesn’t reappear elsewhere once it’s removed, a so-called “notice and stay down” approach. In addition, Google has often been asked to demote pirate links in search results. UK music industry group BPI, who are responsible for more than 10% of all the takedown requests on Google, sees the new milestone as an indicator of how much effort its anti-piracy activities take. “This 3 billion figure shows how hard the creative sector has to work to police its content online and how much time and resource this takes. The BPI is the world’s largest remover of illegal music links from Google, one third of which are on behalf of independent record labels,” Geoff Taylor, BPI’s Chief Executive, informs TF. However, there is also some progress to report. Earlier this year BPI announced a voluntary partnership with Google and Bing to demote pirate content faster and more effectively for US visitors. “We now have a voluntary code of practice in place in the UK, facilitated by Government, that requires Google and Bing to work together with the BPI and other creator organizations to develop lasting solutions to the problem of illegal sites gaining popularity in search listings,” Taylor notes. According to BPI, both Google and Bing have shown that changes to their algorithms can be effective in demoting the worst pirate sites from the top search results and they hope others will follow suit. “Other intermediaries should follow this lead and take more responsibility to work with creators to reduce the proliferation of illegal links and disrupt the ability of illegal sites to capture consumers and build black market businesses that take money away from creators.” Agreement or not, there are still plenty of pirate links in search results, so the BPI is still sending out millions of takedown requests per month. We asked Google for a comment on the new milestone but at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back. In any event, the issue is bound to remain a hot topic during the months and years to come. https://torrentfreak.com/google-asked-to-remove-3-billion-pirate-search-results-171018/

A newly announced coalition of major entertainment companies including Disney, Fox, HBO, NBCUniversal and BBC Worldwide has set its eye on pirate streaming boxes. The Coalition Against Piracy (CAP) will coordinate local enforcement efforts in Asia, hoping to disrupt the "criminal syndicates" behind these devices. Traditionally there have only been a handful of well-known industry groups fighting online piracy, but this appears to be changing. Increasingly, major entertainment industry companies are teaming up in various regions to bundle their enforcement efforts against copyright infringement. Earlier this year the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) was formed by major players including Disney, HBO, and NBCUniversal, and several of the same media giants are also involved in the newly founded Coalition Against Piracy (CAP). CAP will coordinate anti-piracy efforts in Asia and is backed by CASBAA, Disney, Fox, HBO Asia, NBCUniversal, Premier League, Turner Asia-Pacific, A&E Networks, Astro, BBC Worldwide, National Basketball Association, TV5MONDE, Viacom International, and others. The coalition has hired Neil Gane as its general manager. Gane is no stranger to anti-piracy work, as he previously served as the MPAA’s regional director in Australasia and was chief of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft. The goal of CAP will be to assist in local enforcement actions against piracy, including the disruption and dismantling of local businesses that facilitate it. Pirate streaming boxes and apps will be among the main targets. These boxes, which often use the legal Kodi player paired with infringing add-ons, are referred to as illicit streaming devices (ISDs) by industry insiders. They have grown in popularity all around the world and Asia is no exception. “The prevalence of ISDs across Asia is staggering. The criminals who operate the ISD networks and the pirate websites are profiting from the hard work of talented creators, seriously damaging the legitimate content ecosystem as well as exposing consumers to dangerous malware”, Gane said, quoted by Indian Television. Gane knows the region well and started his career working for the Hong Kong Police. He sees the pirate streaming box ecosystem as a criminal network which presents a major threat to the entertainment industries. “This is a highly organized transnational crime with criminal syndicates profiting enormously at the expense of consumers as well as content creators,” Gane noted. The Asian creative industry is a major growth market as more and more legal content is made available. However, the growth of these legal services is threatened by pirate boxes and apps. The Coalition Against Piracy hopes to curb this. The launch of CAP, which will be formalized at the upcoming CASBAA anti-piracy convention in November, confirms the trend of localized anti-piracy coalitions which are backed by major industry players. We can expect to hear more from these during the years to come. Just a few days ago the founding members of the aforementioned ACE anti-piracy initiative filed their first joint lawsuit in the US which, unsurprisingly, targets a seller of streaming boxes. https://torrentfreak.com/new-coalition-against-piracy-will-crack-down-on-pirate-streaming-boxes-171017/

Dozens of influential civil rights groups have called on EU decision-makers to abandon proposals for compulsory proactive copyright filters. Their open letter, addressed to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and colleagues, warns that monitoring citizens' Internet traffic would restrict fundamental rights while running counter to the Electronic Commerce Directive. Last September, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced plans to modernize copyright law in Europe. The proposals (pdf) are part of the Digital Single Market reforms, which have been under development for the past several years. One of the proposals is causing significant concern. Article 13 would require some online service providers to become ‘Internet police’, proactively detecting and filtering allegedly infringing copyright works, uploaded to their platforms by users. Currently, users are generally able to share whatever they like but should a copyright holder take exception to their upload, mechanisms are available for that content to be taken down. It’s envisioned that proactive filtering, whereby user uploads are routinely scanned and compared to a database of existing protected content, will prevent content becoming available in the first place. These proposals are of great concern to digital rights groups, who believe that such filters will not only undermine users’ rights but will also place unfair burdens on Internet platforms, many of which will struggle to fund such a program. Yesterday, in the latest wave of opposition to Article 13, a huge coalition of international rights groups came together to underline their concerns. Headed up by Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties) and European Digital Rights (EDRi), the coalition is formed of dozens of influential groups, including Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Human Rights Watch, Reporters without Borders, and Open Rights Group (ORG), to name just a few. In an open letter to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani, President of the European Council Donald Tusk and a string of others, the groups warn that the proposals undermine the trust established between EU member states. “Fundamental rights, justice and the rule of law are intrinsically linked and constitute core values on which the EU is founded,” the letter begins. “Any attempt to disregard these values undermines the mutual trust between member states required for the EU to function. Any such attempt would also undermine the commitments made by the European Union and national governments to their citizens.” Those citizens, the letter warns, would have their basic rights undermined, should the new proposals be written into EU law. “Article 13 of the proposal on Copyright in the Digital Single Market include obligations on internet companies that would be impossible to respect without the imposition of excessive restrictions on citizens’ fundamental rights,” it notes. A major concern is that by placing new obligations on Internet service providers that allow users to upload content – think YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – they will be forced to err on the side of caution. Should there be any concern whatsoever that content might be infringing, fair use considerations and exceptions will be abandoned in favor of staying on the right side of the law. “Article 13 appears to provoke such legal uncertainty that online services will have no other option than to monitor, filter and block EU citizens’ communications if they are to have any chance of staying in business,” the letter warns. But while the potential problems for service providers and users are numerous, the groups warn that Article 13 could also be illegal since it contradicts case law of the Court of Justice. According to the E-Commerce Directive, platforms are already required to remove infringing content, once they have been advised it exists. The new proposal, should it go ahead, would force the monitoring of uploads, something which goes against the ‘no general obligation to monitor‘ rules present in the Directive. “The requirement to install a system for filtering electronic communications has twice been rejected by the Court of Justice, in the cases Scarlet Extended (C70/10) and Netlog/Sabam (C 360/10),” the rights groups warn. “Therefore, a legislative provision that requires internet companies to install a filtering system would almost certainly be rejected by the Court of Justice because it would contravene the requirement that a fair balance be struck between the right to intellectual property on the one hand, and the freedom to conduct business and the right to freedom of expression, such as to receive or impart information, on the other.” Specifically, the groups note that the proactive filtering of content would violate freedom of expression set out in Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights. That being the case, the groups expect national courts to disapply it and the rule to be annulled by the Court of Justice. The latest protests against Article 13 come in the wake of large-scale objectionsearlier in the year, voicing similar concerns. However, despite the groups’ fears, they have powerful adversaries, each determined to stop the flood of copyrighted content currently being uploaded to the Internet. Front and center in support of Article 13 is the music industry and its current hot-topic, the so-called Value Gap(1,2,3). The industry feels that platforms like YouTube are able to avoid paying expensive licensing fees (for music in particular) by exploiting the safe harbor protections of the DMCA and similar legislation. They believe that proactively filtering uploads would significantly help to diminish this problem, which may very well be the case. But at what cost to the general public and the platforms they rely upon? Citizens and scholars feel that freedoms will be affected and it’s likely the outcry will continue. The ball is now with the EU, whose members will soon have to make what could be the most important decision in recent copyright history. The rights groups, who are urging for Article 13 to be deleted, are clear where they stand. The full letter is available here (pdf) https://torrentfreak.com/abandon-proactive-copyright-filters-huge-coalition-tells-eu-heavyweights-171017/

In its continuing legal battle, popular hip-hop mixtape site and app Spinrilla is striking back against the major record labels. The company accuses the labels of maliciously hiding crucial piracy data, which puts it at a severe disadvantage. Spinrilla now wants to see the entire case dismissed. Earlier this year, a group of well-known labels targeted Spinrilla, a popular hip-hop mixtape site and app which serves millions of users. The coalition of record labels, including Sony Music, Warner Bros. Records, and Universal Music Group, filed a lawsuit against the service over alleged copyright infringements. While the discovery process is still ongoing, Spinrilla recently informed the court that the record labels have “just about derailed” the entire case. The company has submitted a motion for sanctions, which is currently sealed, but additional information submitted to the court this week reveals what’s going on. When the labels filed their original complaint they listed 210 tracks, without providing the allegedly infringing URLs. These weren’t shared during the early stages of the discovery process either, forcing the site to manually search for potentially infringing links. Then, early October, Spinrilla received a massive spreadsheet with over 2,000 tracks, including the infringing URLs. This data came from the RIAA and supported the long list of infringements in the amended complaint submitted around the same time. The spreadsheet would have made the discovery process much easier for Spinrilla. In a supplemental brief supporting a motion for sanctions, Spinrilla accuses the labels of hiding the piracy data from them and lying about it, “derailing” the case in the process. “Significantly, Plaintiffs used that lie to convince the Court they should be allowed to add about 1,900 allegedly infringed sound recordings to their original list of 210. Later, Plaintiffs repeated that lie to convince the Court to give them time to add even more sound recordings to their list.” vbcn Spinrilla says they were forced to go down an expensive and unnecessary rabbit hole to find the infringing files, even though the RIAA data was available all along. “By hiding and lying about the RIAA data, Plaintiffs forced Defendants to spend precious time and money fumbling through discovery. Not knowing that Plaintiffs had the RIAA data,” the company writes. The hip-hop mixtape site argues that the alleged wrongdoing is severe enough to have the entire complaint dismissed, as the ultimate sanction. “It is without exaggeration to say that by hiding the RIAA spreadsheets and that underlying data, Defendants have been severely prejudiced. The Complaint should be dismissed with prejudice and, if it is, Plaintiffs can only blame themselves,” Spinrilla concludes. The stakes are certainly high in this case. With well over 2,000 infringing tracks listed in the amended complaint, the hip-hop mixtape site faces statutory damages as high as $300 million, at least in theory. — Spinrilla’s supplement brief in further support of the motion for sanctions is available here (pdf). https://torrentfreak.com/spinrilla-wants-riaa-case-thrown-out-over-lies-about-hidden-piracy-data-171016/

After several days of radio silence, VPN provider PureVPN has responded to criticism that it provided information which helped the FBI catch a cyberstalker. In a fairly lengthy post, the company reiterates that it never logs user activity. What it does do, however, is log the IP addresses of users accessing its service. Early October, Ryan S. Lin, 24, of Newton, Massachusetts, was arrested on suspicion of conducting “an extensive cyberstalking campaign” against a 24-year-old Massachusetts woman, as well as her family members and friends. The Department of Justice described Lin’s offenses as a “multi-faceted” computer hacking and cyberstalking campaign. Launched in April 2016 when he began hacking into the victim’s online accounts, Lin allegedly obtained personal photographs and sensitive information about her medical and sexual histories and distributed that information to hundreds of other people. Details of what information the FBI compiled on Lin can be found in our earlier reportbut aside from his alleged crimes (which are both significant and repugnant), it was PureVPN’s involvement in the case that caused the most controversy. In a report compiled by an FBI special agent, it was revealed that the Hong Kong-based company’s logs helped the authorities net the alleged criminal. “Significantly, PureVPN was able to determine that their service was accessed by the same customer from two originating IP addresses: the RCN IP address from the home Lin was living in at the time, and the software company where Lin was employed at the time,” the agent’s affidavit reads. Among many in the privacy community, this revelation was met with disappointment. On the PureVPN website the company claims to carry no logs and on a general basis, it’s expected that so-called “no-logging” VPN providers should provide people with some anonymity, at least as far as their service goes. Now, several days after the furor, the company has responded to its critics. In a fairly lengthy statement, the company begins by confirming that it definitely doesn’t log what websites a user views or what content he or she downloads. “PureVPN did not breach its Privacy Policy and certainly did not breach your trust. NO browsing logs, browsing habits or anything else was, or ever will be shared,” the company writes. However, that’s only half the problem. While it doesn’t log user activity (what sites people visit or content they download), it does log the IP addresses that customers use to access the PureVPN service. These, given the right circumstances, can be matched to external activities thanks to logs carried by other web companies. PureVPN talks about logs held by Google’s Gmail service to illustrate its point. “A network log is automatically generated every time a user visits a website. For the sake of this example, let’s say a user logged into their Gmail account. Every time they accessed Gmail, the email provider created a network log,” the company explains. “If you are using a VPN, Gmail’s network log would contain the IP provided by PureVPN. This is one half of the picture. Now, if someone asks Google who accessed the user’s account, Google would state that whoever was using this IP, accessed the account. “If the user was connected to PureVPN, it would be a PureVPN IP. The inquirer [in the Lin case, the FBI] would then share timestamps and network logs acquired from Google and ask them to be compared with the network logs maintained by the VPN provider.” Now, if PureVPN carried no logs – literally no logs – it would not be able to help with this kind of inquiry. That was the case last year when the FBI approached Private Internet Access for information and the company was unable to assist. However, as is made pretty clear by PureVPN’s explanation, the company does log user IP addresses and timestamps which reveal when a user was logged on to the service. It doesn’t matter that PureVPN doesn’t log what the user allegedly did online, since the third-party service already knows that information to the precise second. Following the example, GMail knows that a user sent an email at 10:22am on Monday October 16 from a PureVPN IP address. So, if PureVPN is approached by the FBI, the company can confirm that User X was using the same IP address at exactly the same time, and his home IP address was XXX.XX.XXX.XX. Effectively, the combined logs link one IP address to the other and the user is revealed. It’s that simple. It is for this reason that in TorrentFreak’s annual summary of no-logging VPN providers, the very first question we ask every single company reads as follows: Do you keep ANY logs which would allow you to match an IP-address and a time stamp to a user/users of your service? If so, what information do you hold and for how long? Clearly, if a company says “yes we log incoming IP addresses and associated timestamps”, any claim to total user anonymity is ended right there and then. While not completely useless (a logging service will still stop the prying eyes of ISPs and similar surveillance, while also defeating throttling and site-blocking), if you’re a whistle-blower with a job or even your life to protect, this level of protection is entirely inadequate. The take-home points from this controversy are numerous, but perhaps the most important is for people to read and understand VPN provider logging policies. Secondly, and just as importantly, VPN providers need to be extremely clear about the information they log. Not tracking browsing or downloading activities is all well and good, but if home IP addresses and timestamps are stored, this needs to be made clear to the customer. Finally, VPN users should not be evil. There are plenty of good reasons to stay anonymous online but cyberstalking, death threats and ruining people’s lives are not included. Fortunately, the FBI have offline methods for catching this type of offender, and long may that continue. PureVPN’s blog post is available here. https://torrentfreak.com/purevpn-explains-how-it-helped-the-fbi-catch-a-cyberstalker-171016/

The Pirate Bay's iconic .SE domain name has expired and will be deactivated soon if no action is taken. This means that thepiratebay.se, which played a central part in the site's history, is no longer redirecting to the most current Pirate Bay domain. When The Pirate Bay first came online during the summer of 2003, its main point of access was thepiratebay.org. Since then the site has burnt through more than a dozen domains, trying to evade seizures or other legal threats. For many years thepiratebay.se operated as the site’s main domain name. Earlier this year the site moved back to the good old .org again, and from the looks of it, TPB is ready to say farewell to the Swedish domain. Thepiratebay.se expired last week and, if nothing happens, it will be de-activated tomorrow. This means that the site might lose control over a piece of its history. The torrent site moved from the ORG to the SE domain in 2012, fearing that US authorities would seize the former. Around that time the Department of Homeland Security took hundreds of sites offline and the Pirate Bay team feared that they would be next. Thepiratebay.se has expired Ironically, however, the next big threat came from Sweden, the Scandinavian country where the site once started. In 2013, a local anti-piracy group filed a motion targeting two of The Pirate Bay’s domains, ThePirateBay.se and PirateBay.se. This case that has been dragging on for years now. During this time TPB moved back and forth between domains but the .se domain turned out to be a safer haven than most alternatives, despite the legal issues. Many other domains were simply seized or suspended without prior notice. When the Swedish Court of Appeal eventually ruled that The Pirate Bay’s domain had to be confiscated and forfeited to the state, the site’s operators moved back to the .org domain, where it all started. Although a Supreme Court appeal is still pending, according to a report from IDG earlier this year the court has placed a lock on the domain. This prevents the owner from changing or transferring it, which may explain why it has expired. The lock is relevant, as the domain not only expired but has also been put of for sale again in the SEDO marketplace, with a minimum bid of $90. This sale would be impossible, if the domain is locked. Thepiratebay.se for sale Perhaps the most ironic of all is the fact that TPB moved to .se because it feared that the US controlled .org domain was easy prey. Fast forward half a decade and over a dozen domains have come and gone while thepiratebay.org still stands strong, despite entertainment industry pressure. Update: We updated the article to mention that the domain name is locked by the Swedish Supreme Court. This means that it can’t be updated and would explain why it has expired. https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bays-iconic-se-domain-has-expired-and-is-for-sale-171016/

Netflix-type streaming services are among the best and most convenient alternatives to piracy but they have failed to make unauthorized consumption a thing of the past. Netflix understands this and by continuing to expand its content protection team, the company hopes to reduce piracy to a fringe activity. There is little doubt that, in the United States and many other countries, Netflix has become the standard for watching movies on the Internet. Despite the widespread availability, however, Netflix originals are widely pirated. Episodes from House of Cards, Narcos, and Orange is the New Black are downloaded and streamed millions of times through unauthorized platforms. The streaming giant is obviously not happy with this situation and has ramped up its anti-piracy efforts in recent years. Since last year the company has sent out over a million takedown requests to Google alone and this volume continues to expand. This growth coincides with an expansion of the company’s internal anti-piracy division. A new job posting shows that Netflix is expanding this team with a Copyright and Content Protection Coordinator. The ultimate goal is to reduce piracy to a fringe activity. “The growing Global Copyright & Content Protection Group is looking to expand its team with the addition of a coordinator,” the job listing reads. “He or she will be tasked with supporting the Netflix Global Copyright & Content Protection Group in its internal tactical take down efforts with the goal of reducing online piracy to a socially unacceptable fringe activity.” Among other things, the new coordinator will evaluate new technological solutions to tackle piracy online. More old-fashioned takedown efforts are also part of the job. This includes monitoring well-known content platforms, search engines and social network sites for pirated content. “Day to day scanning of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Periscope, Google Search, Bing Search, VK, DailyMotion and all other platforms (including live platforms) used for piracy,” is listed as one of the main responsibilities. Netflix’ Copyright and Content Protection Coordinator Job The coordinator is further tasked with managing Facebook’s Rights Manager and YouTube’s Content-ID system, to prevent circumvention of these piracy filters. Experience with fingerprinting technologies and other anti-piracy tools will be helpful in this regard. Netflix doesn’t do all the copyright enforcement on its own though. The company works together with other media giants in the recently launched “Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment” that is spearheaded by the MPAA. In addition, the company also uses the takedown services of external anti-piracy outfits to target more traditional infringement sources, such as cyberlockers and piracy streaming sites. The coordinator has to keep an eye on these as well. “Liaise with our vendors on manual takedown requests on linking sites and hosting sites and gathering data on pirate streaming sites, cyberlockers and usenet platforms.” The above shows that Netflix is doing its best to prevent piracy from getting out of hand. It’s definitely taking the issue more seriously than a few years ago when the company didn’t have much original content. The switch from being merely a distribution platform to becoming a major content producer and copyright holder has changed the stakes. Netflix hasn’t won the war on piracy, it’s just getting started. https://torrentfreak.com/netflix-expands-content-protection-team-to-reduce-piracy-171015/

A site focusing on eBooks is being pressured by Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN. Among other things, Eboek.info says it provides digital versions of comics to people who've already bought a physical copy but BREIN insists this is illegal. The site says it won't be giving in to BREIN's demands, adding that Cloudflare's services offer no protection against copyright groups. Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN is probably best known for its legal action against The Pirate Bay but the outfit also tackles many other forms of piracy. A prime example is the case it pursued against a seller of fully-loaded Kodi boxes in the Netherlands. The subsequent landmark ruling from the European Court of Justice will reverberate around Europe for years to come. Behind the scenes, however, BREIN persistently tries to take much smaller operations offline, and not without success. Earlier this year it revealed it had taken down 231 illegal sites and services includes 84 linking sites, 63 streaming portals, and 34 torrent sites. Some of these shut down completely and others were forced to leave their hosting providers. Much of this work flies under the radar but some current action, against an eBook site, is now being thrust into the public eye. For more than five years, EBoek.info (eBook) has serviced Internet users looking to obtain comic books in Dutch. The site informs TorrentFreak it provides a legitimate service, targeted at people who have purchased a hard copy but also want their comics in digital format. “EBoek.info is a site about comic books in the Dutch language. Besides some general information about the books, people who have legally obtained a hard copy of the books can find a link to an NZB file which enables them to download a digital version of the books they already have,” site representative ‘Zala’ says. For those out of the loop, NZB files are a bit like Usenet’s version of .torrent files. They contain no copyrighted content themselves but do provide software clients with information on where to find specific content, so it can be downloaded to a user’s machine. “BREIN claims that this is illegal as it is impossible for us to verify if our visitor is telling the truth [about having purchased a copy],” Zala reveals. Speaking with TorrentFreak, BREIN chief Tim Kuik says there’s no question that offering downloads like this is illegal. “It is plain and simple: the site makes links to unauthorized digital copies available to the general public and therefore is infringing copyright. It is distribution of the content without authorization of the rights holder,” Kuik says. “The unauthorized copies are not private copies. The private copy exception does not apply to this kind of distribution. The private copy has not been made by the owner of the book himself for his own use. Someone else made the digital copy and is making it available to anyone who wants to download it provided he makes the unverified claim that he has a legal copy. This harms the normal exploitation of the content.” Zala says that BREIN has been trying to take his site offline for many years but more recently, the platform has utilized the services of Cloudflare, partly as a form of shield. As readers may be aware, a site behind Cloudflare has its originating IP addresses hidden from the public, not to mention BREIN, who values that kind of information. According to the operator, however, BREIN managed to obtain the information from the CDN provider. “BREIN has tried for years to take our site offline. Recently, however, Cloudflare was so friendly to give them our IP address,” Zala notes. A text copy of an email reportedly sent by BREIN to EBoek’s web host and seen by TF appears to confirm that Cloudflare handed over the information as suggested. Among other things, the email has BREIN informing the host that “The IP we got back from Cloudflare is XXX.XXX.XX.33.” This means that BREIN was able to place direct pressure on EBoek.info’s web host, so only time will tell if that bears any fruit for the anti-piracy group. In the meantime, however, EBoek has decided to go public over its battle with BREIN. “We have received a request from Stichting BREIN via our hosting provider to take EBoek.info offline,” the site informed its users yesterday. Interestingly, it also appears that BREIN doesn’t appreciate that the operators of EBoek have failed to make their identities publicly known on their platform. “The site operates anonymously which also is unlawful. Consumer protection requires that the owner/operator of a site identifies himself,” Kuik says. According to EBoek, the anti-piracy outfit told the site’s web host that as a “commercial online service”, EBoek is required under EU law to display its “correct and complete business information” including names, addresses, and other information. But perhaps unsurprisingly, the site doesn’t want to play ball. “In my opinion, you are confusing us with Facebook. They are a foreign commercial company with a European branch in Ireland, and therefore are subject to Irish legislation,” Zala says in an open letter to BREIN. “Eboek.info, on the other hand, is a foreign hobby club with no commercial purpose, whose administrators have no connection with any country in the European Union. As administrators, we follow the laws of our country of residence which do not oblige us to disclose our identity through our website. “The fact that Eboek is visible in the Netherlands does not just mean that we are going to adapt to Dutch rules, just as we don’t adapt the site to the rules of Saudi Arabia or China or wherever we are available.” In a further snub to the anti-piracy group, EBoek says that all visitors to the site have to communicate with its operators via its guestbook, which is publicly visible. “We see no reason to make an exception for Stichting BREIN,” the site notes. What makes the situation more complex is that EBoek isn’t refusing dialog completely. The site says it doesn’t want to talk to BREIN but will speak to BREIN’s customers – the publishers of the comic books in question – noting that to date no complaints from publishers have ever been received. While the parties argue about lines of communication, BREIN insists that following this year’s European Court of Justice decision in the GS Media case, a link to a known infringing work represents copyright infringement. In this case, an NZB file – which links to a location on Usenet – would generally fit the bill. But despite focusing on the Dutch market, the operators of EBoek say the ruling doesn’t apply to them as they’re outside of the ECJ’s jurisdiction and aren’t commercially motivated. Refusing point blank to take their site offline, EBoek’s operators say that BREIN can do its worst, nothing will have much effect. “[W]hat’s the worst thing that can happen? That our web host hands [BREIN] our address and IP data. In that case, it will turn out that…we are actually far away,” Zala says. “[In the case the site goes offline], we’ll just put a backup on another server and, in this case, won’t make use of the ‘services’ of Cloudflare, the provider that apparently put BREIN on the right track.” The question of jurisdiction is indeed an interesting one, particularly given BREIN’s focus in the Netherlands. But Kuik is clear – it is the area where the content is made available that matters. “The law of the country where the content is made available applies. In this case the EU and amongst others the Netherlands,” Kuik concludes. To be continued….. https://torrentfreak.com/pirate-ebook-site-refuses-point-blank-to-cooperate-with-brein-171015/

Several major Hollywood studios, Amazon, and Netflix have filed a lawsuit against TickBox TV, a Kodi-powered streaming device. The companies accuse Tickbox of promoting their device as a pirate tool, showing users how they can access infringing content. The lawsuit is the first of its kind in the United States. Online streaming piracy is booming and many people use dedicated media players to bring this content to their regular TVs. The bare hardware is not illegal and neither is media player software such as Kodi. When these devices are loaded with copyright-infringing addons, however, they turn into an unprecedented piracy threat. It becomes even more problematic when the sellers of these devices market their products as pirate tools. This is exactly what TickBox TV does, according to Hollywood’s major movie studios, Netflix, and Amazon. TickBox is a Georgia-based provider of set-top boxes that allow users to stream a variety of popular media. The company’s devices use the Kodi media player and come with instructions on how to add various add-ons. In a complaint filed in a California federal court yesterday, Universal, Columbia Pictures, Disney, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros, Amazon, and Netflix accuse Tickbox of inducing and contributing to copyright infringement. “TickBox sells ‘TickBox TV,’ a computer hardware device that TickBox urges its customers to use as a tool for the mass infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrighted motion pictures and television shows,” the complaint, picked up by THR, reads. While the device itself does not host any infringing content, users are informed where they can find it. The movie and TV studios stress that Tickbox’s marketing highlights its infringing uses with statements such as “if you’re tired of wasting money with online streaming services like Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime.” Sick of paying high monthly fees? “TickBox promotes the use of TickBox TV for overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, infringing purposes, and that is how its customers use TickBox TV. TickBox advertises TickBox TV as a substitute for authorized and legitimate distribution channels such as cable television or video-on-demand services like Amazon Prime and Netflix,” the studios’ lawyers write. The complaint explains in detail how TickBox works. When users first boot up their device they are prompted to download the “TickBox TV Player” software. This comes with an instruction video guiding people to infringing streams. “The TickBox TV instructional video urges the customer to use the ‘Select Your Theme’ button on the start-up menu for downloading addons. The ‘Themes’ are curated collections of popular addons that link to unauthorized streams of motion pictures and television shows.” “Some of the most popular addons currently distributed — which are available through TickBox TV — are titled ‘Elysium,’ ‘Bob,’ and ‘Covenant’,” the complaint adds, showing screenshots of the interface. Covenant The movie and TV studios, which are the founding members of the recently launched ACE anti-piracy initiative, want TickBox to stop selling their devices. In addition, they demand compensation for the damages they’ve suffered. Requesting the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per copyright infringement, this can run into the millions. The involvement of Amazon, albeit the content division, is notable since the online store itself sells dozens of similar streaming devices, some of which even list “infringing” addons. The TickBox lawsuit is the first case in the United States where a group of major Hollywood players is targeting a streaming device. Earlier this year various Hollywood insiders voiced concerns about the piracy streaming epidemic and if this case goes their way, it probably won’t be the last. — A copy of the full complaint is available here (pdf) https://torrentfreak.com/hollywood-giants-sue-kodi-powered-tickbox-tv-over-piracy-171014/

A popular content-neutral torrent tracker has been forced offline following pressure from an anti-piracy outfit. Zer0day was tracking more than five million peers earlier this month but a mass complaint from SCPP, an outfit that represents Warner, Universal, Sony and thousands of others, caused its host to terminate service. In January 2016, a BitTorrent enthusiast decided to launch a stand-alone tracker, purely for fun. The Zer0day platform, which hosts no torrents, is a tracker in the purest sense, directing traffic between peers, no matter what content is involved and no matter where people are in the world. With this type of tracker in short supply, it was soon utilized by The Pirate Bay and the now-defunct ExtraTorrent. By August 2016, it was tracking almost four million peers and a million torrents, a considerable contribution to the BitTorrent ecosystem. After handling many ups and downs associated with a service of this type, the tracker eventually made it to the end of 2016 intact. This year it grew further still and by the end of September was tracking an impressive 5.5 million peers spread over 1.2 million torrents. Soon after, however, the tracker disappeared from the Internet without warning. In an effort to find out what had happened, TorrentFreak contacted Zer0day’s operator who told us a familiar story. Without any warning at all, the site’s host pulled the plug on the service, despite having been paid 180 euros for hosting just a week earlier. “We’re hereby informing you of the termination of your dedicated server due to a breach of our terms of service,” the host informed Zer0day. “Hosting trackers on our servers that distribute infringing and copyrighted content is prohibited. This server was found to distribute such content. Should we identify additional similar activity in your services, we will be forced to close your account.” While hosts tend not to worry too much about what their customers are doing, this one had just received a particularly lengthy complaint. Sent by the head of anti-piracy at French collecting society SCPP, it laid out the group’s problems with the Zer0day tracker. “SCPP has been responsible for the collective management and protection of sound recordings and music videos producers’ rights since 1985. SCPP counts more than 2,600 members including the majority of independent French producers, in addition to independent European producers, and the major international companies: Sony, Universal and Warner,” the complaints reads. “SCPP administers a catalog of 7,200,000 sound tracks and 77,000 music videos. SCPP is empowered by its members to take legal action in order to put an end to any infringements of the producers’ rights set out in Article L335-4 of the French Intellectual Property Code…..punishable by a three-year prison sentence or a fine of €300,000.” Noting that it works on behalf of a number of labels and distributors including BMG, Sony Music, Universal Music, Warner Music and others, SCPP listed countless dozens of albums under its protection, each allegedly tracked by the Zer0day platform. “It has come to our attention that these music albums are illegally being communicated to the public (made available for download) by various users of the BitTorrent-Network,” the complaint reads. Noting that Zer0day is involved in the process, the anti-piracy outfit presented dozens of hash codes relating to protected works, demanding that the site stop facilitation of infringement on each and every one of them. “We have proof that your tracker udp://tracker.zer0day.to:1337/announce provided peers of the BitTorrent-Network with information regarding these torrents, to be specific IP Addresses of peers that were offering without authorization the full albums for download, and that this information enabled peers to download files that contain the sound recordings to which our members producers have the exclusive rights. “These sound recordings are thus being illegally communicated to the public, and your tracker is enabling the seeders to do so.” Rather than take the hashes down from the tracker, SCPP actually demanded that Zer0day create a permanent blacklist within 24 hours, to ensure the corresponding torrents wouldn’t be tracked again. “You should understand that this letter constitutes a notice to you that you may be liable for the infringing activity occurring on your service. In addition, if you ignore this notice, you may also be liable for any resulting infringement,” the complaint added. But despite all the threats, SCPP didn’t receive the response they’d demanded since the operator of the site refused to take any action. “Obviously, ‘info hashes’ are not copyrightable nor point to specific copyrighted content, or even have any meaning. Further, I cannot verify that request strings parameters (‘info hashes’) you sent me contain copyrighted material,” he told SCPP. “Like the website says; for content removal kindly ask the indexing site to remove the listing and the .torrent file. Also, tracker software does not have an option to block request strings parameters (‘info hashes’).” The net effect of non-compliance with SCPP was fairly dramatic and swift. Zer0day’s host took down the whole tracker instead and currently it remains offline. Whether it reappears depends on the site’s operator finding a suitable web host, but at the moment he says he has no idea where one will appear from. “Currently I’m searching for some virtual private server as a temporary home for the tracker,” he concludes. As mentioned in an earlier article detailing the problems sites like Zer0day.to face, trackers aren’t absolutely essential for the functioning of BitTorrent transfers. Nevertheless, their existence certainly improves matters for file-sharers so when they go down, millions can be affected. https://torrentfreak.com/popular-zer0day-torrent-tracker-taken-offline-by-mass-copyright-complaint-171014/

The CCIA, which represents global tech firms including Google, Facebook and Microsoft, is protesting a looming injunction that would require search engines, ISPs and hosting companies to stop linking to or offering services to several "pirate" sites. The injunction requested by --- is overbroad, the tech giants warn. While domain seizures against pirate sites are relatively common in the United states, ISP and search engine blocking is not. This could change soon though. In an ongoing case against Sci-Hub, regularly referred to as the “Pirate Bay of Science,” a magistrate judge in Virginia recently recommended a broad order which would require search engines and Internet providers to block the site. The recommendation followed a request from the academic publisher American Chemical Society (ACS) that wants these third-party services to make the site in question inaccessible. While Sci-Hub has chosen not to defend itself, a group of tech giants has now stepped in to prevent the broad injunction from being issued. This week the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which includes members such as Cloudflare, Facebook, and Google, asked the court to limit the proposed measures. In an amicus curiae brief submitted to the Virginia District Court, they share their concerns. “Here, Plaintiff is seeking—and the Magistrate Judge has recommended—a permanent injunction that would sweep in various Neutral Service Providers, despite their having violated no laws and having no connection to this case,” CCIA writes. According to the tech companies, neutral service providers are not “in active concert or participation” with the defendant, and should, therefore, be excluded from the proposed order. While search engines may index Sci-Hub and ISPs pass on packets from this site, they can’t be seen as “confederates” that are working together with them to violate the law, CCIA stresses. “Plaintiff has failed to make a showing that any such provider had a contract with these Defendants or any direct contact with their activities—much less that all of the providers who would be swept up by the proposed injunction had such a connection.” Even if one of the third party services could be found liable the matter should be resolved under the DMCA, which expressly prohibits such broad injunctions, the CCIA claims. “The DMCA thus puts bedrock limits on the injunctions that can be imposed on qualifying providers if they are named as defendants and are held liable as infringers. Plaintiff here ignores that. “What ACS seeks, in the posture of a permanent injunction against nonparties, goes beyond what Congress was willing to permit, even against service providers against whom an actual judgment of infringement has been entered.That request must be rejected.” The tech companies hope the court will realize that the injunction recommended by the magistrate judge will set a dangerous precedent, which goes beyond what the law is intended for, so will impose limits in response to their concerns. It will be interesting to see whether any copyright holder groups will also chime in, to argue the opposite. — CCIA’s full amicus curiae brief is available here (pdf). https://torrentfreak.com/tech-giants-protest-looming-us-pirate-site-blocking-order-171013/