Animated comedy tops action rivals with $21 million second week; “Single Moms Club” bombs, “Grand Budapest Hotel” and “Veronica Mars” crack top 10 Animation trumped action at the weekend box office, as the family comedy “Mr. Peabody and Sherman” surged past “Need for Speed” and two other testosterone-fueled movies to pull off an upset with a $21.2 million second week. Moviegoers chose DreamWorks Animation's tale of a professorial pooch and his young charge over the 3D big screen adaptation of the popular video game, which opened with an underwhelming $17.8 million despite the presence of star Aaron Paul, from TV's “Breaking Bad.” That left the hot car tale in third behind last week's No. 1 film, the R-rated sword-and-sandals saga “300: Rise of an Empire,” which took in $19.1 million. The Liam Neeson jetliner thriller “Non-Stop” was fourth with $10.6 million in its third week. “Tyler Perry's Single Moms Club,” the weekend's other wide opener, disappointed with $8.3 million, the lowest debut ever for a film directed by Perry. Meanwhile, Wes Anderson's ensemble comedy “The Grand Budapest Hotel” stayed hot in its expansion and cracked the top ten with $3.6 million and a terrific $55,152 average on 66 screens. That put it just ahead of “Veronica Mars,” the TV show adaptation that was brought to the big screen via a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign, which finished eighth with $2 million in its limited debut. “Mr. Peabody,” which is based on a segment from the 50-year-old TV cartoon series “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show,” continued to draw an audience beyond the minivan crowd — 57 percent of its audience was over 25 — and upped its domestic total to $63 million for distributor Fox. “We're still seeing strong approval numbers from the youngsters in our exit polls,” said Fox distribution chief Chris Aronson, “but there's definitely an adult nostalgia thing going on here.” Directed by Rob Minkoff (“The Lion King”) and featuring the voice of Ty Burrell of TV's “Modern Family,” “Mr. Peabody saw a big surge Saturday in its market-high 3,951 theaters and wound up down just 32 percent from its opening weekend. That suggests staying power over the next few weeks and schools’ spring break, but it will face a challenge starting Friday, when Disney rolls out “Muppets Most Wanted.” DreamWorks’ “Need for Speed” came in well under the $25 million that analysts and distributor Disney had projected. They'd expected a combination of gamers, fans of muscle car movies and a 3D boost to power “Need for Speed.” It hit those demographic targets, just not hard enough, and the presence of the other action movies may have hurt. “Need for Speed” failed to match the $23 million opening of the weakest of the “Fast & Furious” movies, 2006's “Tokyo Drift.” And it didn't connect with the console crowd either, joining a list of recent video-game misfires that includes “Max Payne” and “Silent Hill: Revelation.” The audience was 70 percent male and 56 percent was between 18 and 34 years of age. The 3D screens, in 90 percent of the 3,115 theaters, delivered just 43 percent of the gross. It received a so-so “B+” CinemaScore. “If the overall number was bigger we'd be doing high fives because of the demos,” Disney distribution chief Dave Hollis told TheWrap Sunday. “One of the fundamentally tricky parts of tracking is that younger audiences can be finicky and easily distracted, but keeping their focus is our job, so the domestic opening is disappointing.” The foreign openings provided a bright spot. “Need for Speed” took in $45.6 million from roughly 40 markets, led by a strong $21 million No. 1 debut in China, so its $63.4 million first-weekend worldwide total nearly matches its $66 million production budget. Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros.’ “300: Rise of an Empire” raised its domestic total to $78 million. It was off 58 percent, a little more than the 53 percent that the original “300″ fell in its second week. With another $41 million from overseas this weekend, it's up to $158 million internationally and $236 million worldwide. “Tyler Perry's Single Moms Club,” landed with a thud. The PG-13 comedy-drama drew a crowd that was predictably female (79 percent) and older (80 percent over 25), and they gave it an “A-” CinemaScore. It's the final film Perry will release via Lionsgate, at least for now, as he turns his attention to his TV work with Oprah Winfrey's OWN Network. Warner Bros.’ PG-13-rated “Veronica Mars,” starring Kristen Bell, got off to a solid start in its limited debut. The comedy co-written, produced, and directed by creator Rob Thomas was also made available for download Friday, which may have cut into its box office, and early streaming problems had some of the film's contributors seething. Disney's animated juggernaut “Frozen” spent its 17th week in the top ten, with a little over $2 million this weekend. It's about to cross $400 million domestically and has taken in more than $1.02 billion worldwide.

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If it wasn't for the Chilling Effects DMCA clearing house the actions of those abusing the DMCA would go largely unreported. Still, the Copyright Alliance doesn't like the site, this week describing the information resource as "repugnant" to the DMCA. Unsurprisingly, Chilling Effects sees things differently. chillingThanks to Google’s Transparency Report we have the clearest picture yet of the battle taking place between content owners and the indexing and linking of allegedly infringing content online. The search engine takes down millions of URLs every week, a not insignificant amount by any standard. Fortunately we don’t simply have to take Google’s statistics at face value. The notices received by the company are processed and later sent to the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse. There they are input into a searchable database so that the public can cross reference Google’s reports (along with others from companies such as Twitter) with the actual takedown notices, thus bringing accountability to the process. It is through both of these database that TorrentFreak has been able to unearth dozens of serious errors and abuses carried out by the automated takedown systems operated by the world’s largest copyright holders. While there can be little doubt that Chilling Effects is an invaluable resource for those reporting on piracy issues or tracking DMCA abuses, not everyone is happy with the service being offered by the site. As detailed in our previous reports (1,2), this week various rightsholders and service providers have been giving statements on the effectiveness of the DMCA. Among them was the Copyright Alliance, an organization that counts the MPAA, NBC, Viacom and TimeWarner among its members. The theme running through CEO Sandra Aistars’ statement is that the takedown provisions of the DMCA don’t work, whether you’re a creator or a website drowning in notices. Surprisingly, Aistars also took aim at Chilling Effects aistarsThe project is operated by a selection of law school clinics and the EFF with the aim of supporting lawful online activity against the chill of unwarranted legal threats, but the Copyright Alliance CEO says the site helps bully artists who stand up for their rights. “The activities of chillingeffects.org are repugnant to the purposes of Section 512 [of the DMCA],” Aistars reported to the House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing. “Data collected by high-volume recipients of DMCA notices such as Google, and senders of DMCA notices such as trade associations representing the film and music industries demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of DMCA notices sent are legitimate, yet the site unfairly maligns artists and creators using the legal process created by Section 512 as proponents of censorship.” Speaking with TorrentFreak, Chilling Effects Project Leader Wendy Seltzer said that the repository exists for informational and research purposes. “Many of the Chilling Effects participants filed an amicus brief (pdf) in the 9th Circuit a few years ago, in which we describe Chilling Effects’ public purpose at length, and cite 25+ research works that, even in 2010, had been written using Chilling Effects data,” Seltzer explained. However, continuing her criticism, Aistars told the hearing that by publishing DMCA notices intact, thereby revealing their senders, Chilling Effects had helped subject creators to “harassment and personal attacks for seeking to exercise their legal rights.” seltzerSeltzer, a Fellow with Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy who sits on the boards of both the Tor Project and of World Wide Web Foundation, dismisses the allegations. “[Chilling Effects] has always had policies of redacting unnecessary personally identifying information, while preserving the information needed for researchers, including members of the Internet-using public, to determine who filed takedown notices and what content they requested removal.” Finally, in a not unexpected development, the Copyright Alliance CEO said that due to Chilling Effects publishing DMCA notices in their entirety, its database had grown into a huge list of pirate content links. “Finally, because the site does not redact information about the infringing URLs identified in the notices, it has effectively become the largest repository of URLs hosting infringing content on the internet,” Aistars concludes. While copyright holders may not like what Chilling Effects does, the site brings much-needed accountability to those using and abusing the DMCA takedown process. Without it the entire process would exist in the dark, and content wrongfully disappeared from search engines and other sites would remain unaccounted for. The site is one of, if not the most important DMCA-related resource online today, and long may that continue.

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Tracker Name : DataScene Signup Link : http://anonym.to/?http://datascene.net/signup.php Genre : General Closing Date : 5days Additional Information : Get quickly this is a Ro tracker Stats: Max Users: 16000 Registered users: 14,910 Today reg. users: 135 Unconfirmed users: 0 Warned Users: 97 Banned Users: 143 Torrents: 13,435 Peers: 31,760 Seeders: 30,121 Leechers: 1,639

100+ Hrs of Free Leeching Starting Now ends on 2014-03-20 GMT THANK YOU :w00t: For making Bitspyder what it is today, for helping us build a better community of knowledge seekers. Your support, co-operation and contributions are the only reasons that made us what we are today. We are proud to a have such a beautiful community. Now we are Celebrating our 8th Anniversary in building a better community. We continue to expect your best participation. : Everyone gets 2GB Free Upload credits + 3 Free Invites : And to all those who are currently warned, your warning has been Reset. TOP 10 Contest Rules : [Contest applicable to only torrents which are uploaded between 2014-03-16 00:00GMT & 2014-03-23 19:00GMT] Two uploaders with most snatches will be awarded VIP status + 60GB Upload Credits Third one will be awarded Privileged User status + 30GB Upload Credits (if already a Privileged User , member will be promoted to VIP) Rest of the 7 uploaders will be credited with 20GB uploaded to their profile (You can only win once) . Winners of the competition shall be declared on 2014-03-28 GMT and Snatches till declaration will be counted. To Qualify: Upload should be above 200MB For VIP stats - Uploader must have a ratio of 1.0 or above (when we declare the winner) and must be a member for atleast one week , else only upload credits will be credited.

Downtime: The website will be down for service on 22:00 pm tonight. It is expected to be finished in 24 hours. We offer our apologies to you for the inconvenience has caused you. We have to reiterate that it is not allowed to use shared IP VPN or proxy server, say goagent, to communicate with our trackers. However, it is okay to use them to view webpages and download torrents. HDWinG Staff

A sluggish internet connection could wipe out up to 20 percent of the price of a house, claims the property expert. Estate agents report that buyers are willing to pull out of a deal if broadband connectivity is not available or slow in that particular area. According to the survey of 3,000 users conducted by the property search website – Rightmove, broadband speed is above the criteria like transport links and proximity to schools in importance. Bernard Phillips, the head of consumer platforms at Rightmove, said “We already offer a number of tools to help consumers make informed decisions about a property, and we’re pleased to be the first to add broadband speeds to this. Broadband has become ingrained in people’s lives and is an important factor when choosing a home.” “A home without at least a standard broadband connection could be worth up to 20% less than a comparable property,” said property expert Henry Pryor, claiming broadband speed to be regarded as the “fourth utility” after gas, water and electricity. “The more demanding buyers now want fiber-optic superfast speeds as, whether working from home, streaming entertainment or managing the stack of equipment that now relies on this, a property needs to have 21st-century connectivity.” Frank Speir of property buying agency Prime Purchase said “Seven or eight years ago, the issue of broadband speeds was never brought up by clients. Six years ago they started mentioning them as something nice to have, and now it is absolutely fundamental to many buyers that they have fast broadband.” British Telecom’s deployment of the superfast network to deliver speeds up to 30Mbps to 95 percent of the UK by 2015, has now been pushed back to 2017. The latest figures from the Ofcom, show that just 19 percent of the country is currently accessing these broadband speeds. Households particularly those in rural and hard-to-reach areas of the UK are stuck on the sluggish speeds of 2Mbps or even less.

When Hotfile settled with the MPAA last year, the file-hosting service also agreed to drop its DMCA abuse case against Warner Bros, keeping crucial records hidden from the public. The EFF doesn't believe the movie studio should get off the hook that easily, so has asked a federal court in Florida to unseal the applicable court records. In a retaliatory move, three years ago file-hosting service Hotfile sued Warner Bros., accusing the movie studio of repeatedly abusing the DMCA takedown process. Hotfile alleged that after giving Warner access to its systems, the studio removed hundreds of files that weren’t theirs, including games demos and Open Source software. In a response, Warner Bros. admitted the accusations. However, the movie studio argued that they were not to blame because a computer made the mistakes, not a person. As a result, the false takedown requests were not “deliberate lies.” Warner Bros. asked the court for summary judgment in its favor but Florida District Court Judge Kathleen Williams eventually decided to let the issue be heard before a jury, stating that there was sufficient evidence to suggest that Warner intentionally took down files it didn’t own. With instances of automated abuse becoming more frequent in recent years the case promised to be crucial. But last November, a few weeks before the trial was due to begin, it was closed as part of a settlement between Hotfile and the MPAA. The decision was a disappointment to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) who have now asked the court to unseal documents regarding Warner’s alleged abuse. According to the group, the public has the right to know what mistakes Warner made. “Judge Williams’ decision was encouraging, but mysterious – we don’t get to see evidence of how Warner’s system works and which of its improper DMCA takedown notices gave rise to liability. So we know that Warner may have crossed a line, but not how or why,” EFF notes. EFF’s interest in the matter is heightened because Congress and the Patent and Trademark Office have asked the public for input on the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown procedure. Details about Warner’s alleged abuse can help to shape these discussions, the group explains. “Without seeing the facts that went into Judge WIlliams’s decision, it doesn’t help people design takedown systems that comply with the law, and it doesn’t help anyone make informed arguments about the DMCA when Congress takes it up,” EFF says. According to EFF, public interest trumps Warner’s motivations to keep the court documents under seal. In fact, EFF believes that one of Warner’s main reasons not to disclose the details is to avoid embarrassment. “There are indications that Warner simply seeks to avoid embarrassment that might follow from public disclosure of abusive practices that the Court’s summary judgment order strongly suggest were taking place. Avoiding embarrassment of a corporate litigant is not a legitimate reason for denying the public its right of access,” EFF tells Judge Williams. The EFF is convinced that some copyright holders are abusing the DMCA to censor free speech. If this is the case with Warner, then lawmakers should know about it, so these violations can be stopped in the future. “Lawmakers need to hear about how well the system is actually working, and whether it protects Internet users against having their speech curtailed by takedown-bots or overzealous and poorly trained reviewers.” “Actual data about major DMCA users like Warner is vital,” EFF concludes.

Federal regulators keep trying to set rules in order to make sure American ISPs don’t block or slow access to any legitimate online content. The FCC claimed it won’t appeal a US court decision which rejected a previous version of the so-called “net neutrality” rules mostly because of the way the FCC had classified ISPs. The court reaffirmed that the FCC had right to regulate broadband access, and the commission is going to use this right to review how it can bring back non-discrimination and no-blocking regulations while complying with the court order. The question is whether ISPs can be allowed to charge such giants as Netflix or Google for better service, as this could hurt consumers. FCC believes that the court invited it to preserve a free and open Internet, and the commission is going to accept that invitation by proposing rules which will manage to meet the court’s requirements. Now FCC is going to negotiate new rules which would make sure that ISPs disclose exactly how they manage Internet traffic and that they don’t unfairly limit users’ ability to surf the network or use applications. The commission promised that the new rules will be finished by early summer. The recent ruling by the US Court of Appeals spurred concerns that mobile carriers and other network providers could begin charging content providers for faster access to their sites and services. In the meantime, almost all major ISPs promised to continue abiding by the principles of open Internet. A citizen petition to the White House, calling for ISPs to be treated more like telephone companies, has collected over 100,000 signatures and can give FCC more oversight power. Obama administration had to admit that without net neutrality, the worldwide web could turn into a high-priced private toll road which would be inaccessible to the next generation of visionaries. The FCC had classified broadband providers as information service providers rather than telecommunications service providers, and the commission didn’t move to start the reclassification. In the recent court case against the FCC, Verizon had argued that the commission’s existing version of “open internet” rules violated its right to free speech at the very least

Twitter blocked links to Kickass.to, the 2nd largest torrent index online. Users trying to access the website via Twitter receive a warning that the website may be unsafe and potentially harmful. In the meantime, Twitter provided no comments about the reason for this unusual blockade. KickassTorrents accounts for millions of unique daily visitors, which makes it one of the most used BitTorrent trackers, trailing only behind The Pirate Bay. Kickass indexes millions of torrents, which can then be shared via various social media, including Twitter. For instance, writer Alex Sayf Cummings published a link to a torrent of his own book “Music Piracy And The Remaking Of American Copyright” in a tweet recently. He was obviously inviting people to get a free copy of the book from the website, but Twitter wasn’t making it easy. People who click on the link to Kickass faced an ominous warning: “The site you were trying to visit may be unsafe! This link has been flagged as potentially harmful”. In addition, the social network points out that users can proceed to the website at their own risk, but not everyone will do so. The first question is why Twitter decided KickassTorrents is a dangerous website. The company claims to use Google’s safe browsing diagnostic instrument, but it is known that the Kickass.to domain isn’t blocked there. Moreover, KickassTorrent’s old domain Kat.ph gets the same blocking treatment. It seems that Twitter has for some reason decided that this particular torrent tracker is a forbidden zone for its users. Twitter’s help section says that even if Google’s diagnostic report of the link is clean, it may decide to continue blocking it as potentially harmful. Some experts believe that the blockade has something to do with the fact that KickassTorrent links to copyright infringing files. Facebook also used to restrict access to The Pirate Bay for the same reason. However, the company reversed that decision after a few months. Thus far, KickassTorrents is the only large torrent tracker blocked by the microblogging platform, but it may be just the start. Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the twins whose names you may know from “The Social Network” movie, hold about $25 million in Bitcoin. They recently announced the launch of their own price tracker for the digital currency. Since MtGox, known as the most prominent Bitcoin exchange, prevented withdrawals a few weeks ago, sources of information on Bitcoin like RTBTC have become unreliable. Winklevoss’ project, “Winkdex”, is going to solve the problem. Cameron Winklevoss, the chief executive officer of the company behind Winkdex, believes that they will establish an accurate spot price which will reflect the real value of Bitcoin and resolve the price confusion existing thanks to the different exchanges. His brother Tyler is the president of the company. Twins say that the creation of an index reflecting accurate pricing will help to ensure wider acceptance of Bitcoin as an asset class. Winkdex takes an amalgamation of Bitcoin prices over 6 exchanges, including Japanese MtGox, British Bitstamp and Bulgarian BTC-E. Then the prices are averaged together through a “proprietary, patent pending Winkdex formula”. The later takes into account volume and timing of transactions, providing more weight to transactions that have had more trades in the last couple hours. The Winklevoss twins will use Winkdex internally to price their own Bitcoin holdings. Those have never been publicly disclosed. One year ago, the brothers admitted their holdings amounted to 1% of all Bitcoins in existence. Thus, some can make a conclusion that it would equate to an investment of $11 million in last year prices. If the Winkdex sets price of Bitcoin at $592, it will mean that the Winklevoss have more than doubled their money in the interim. A decade ago, the brothers sued Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg for $140 million, accusing Mark of stealing their idea for the social network. Four years later, the case was settled for $65 million.

Iranian hackers have seriously damaged the US Navy. Back in September 2013, the US Navy’s largest unclassified computer network was cracked by someone believed to be working for Iranian government or acting with its approval. In September there were no other details revealed, but the whole affair looked like a simple hack to revenge all Stuxnet stuff that the United States and Israel did to the country’s nuclear plant. Today US officials claim that the network infiltration appeared to be far more extensive than previously admitted. Moreover, it lasted much longer. Media reports confirm that it took the United States 4 months after initial news of the hack emerged in the end of September to purge the hackers from the network. The Iranian intruders hit the Navy Marine Corps intranet via some security vulnerability in one of the Navy’s public-facing sites. The US officials revealed that although the intruders made no headway into classified networks, they seemed to be everywhere in the network. It is known that it took a coordinated plan to push the hackers out, and the government even had to hire cyberwarriors and contractors to do the job. Overall, the cost to repair the network, according to a senior defense official, was $10 million. In addition, the bill can rise when a few other invoices are paid. According to the US Navy, their experts were surprised at the skills of the Iranian hackers, who had previously tended to use DDoS attacks to attack American government networks. Such attacks aren’t very difficult to stop. The only worrying thing is that while the intruders reportedly were unable to extract any truly valuable data from their infiltration, they could still do very much damage. In addition, the Iranians could train other hackers in their techniques.

MegaUpload founder suffered a significant court defeat from the NZ government and can now be extradited to face a trial in a US court.The court in New Zealand decided that the search warrant used in the Dotcom’s arrest on US online piracy charges was legitimate. Apparently, the decision will benefit American prosecutors who claim that MegaUpload website made damages to movie studios and record companies of over $500 million, before generating over $175 million in criminal proceeds by allowing users store and share copyrighted content, like films and TV shows. If Kim Dotcom is extradited to the United States, the ensuing copyright case will surely set a precedent for Internet liability legislation. In case Dotcom wins, entertainment industry will have to rethink distribution methods they use on the Internet. According to the previous high court ruling, the search warrants were vague and enabled the authorities to seize stuff irrelevant to the charges against MegaUpload founder. However, the appeals court decided the warrants were adequately worded and shouldn’t have caused any misunderstanding. The court claimed the warrant clearly stated what the police could take. It didn’t go all the American government’s way – the appeals court upheld a previous ruling that the prosecutors hadn’t been authorized to send clones of seized electronic evidence to the US. In other words, the New Zealand government could be sued by Kim Dotcom for its role in the raid in his NZ mansion. Nevertheless, Dotcom may find it difficult to challenge evidence at his extradition hearing scheduled for July 2014. A Supreme Court decision is pending on whether American prosecutors must disclose evidence to be used in the court hearing. Both the defendant and the plaintiffs claimed they could also appeal to the Supreme Court to reverse the appeal court decision.

Nicolas Maduro, the beleaguered Venezuela president, has just demonstrated he had absolutely nothing to hide when protestors took to the streets against his government. The president has simply turned off the Internet and television. It seems that Nicolas Maduro is worried that protestors might be using the worldwide web (especially social networks) to organize their dissent. However, the shutdown of the television stations shows that he is more worried about the entire world seeing what the president is doing. The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) confirmed that Venezuelans working with different Internet service providers across the country lost all connectivity late last week. In the meantime, the Venezuelan media regulation network CONATEL claimed that the cuts weren’t due to the protests directly. Instead, the network blamed hackers working for the opposition for offtime. However, it is clear to a child that it would a little hard for hackers to bring down news network NTN24. Well, even we suggest that they had, then why did they leave the Telesur in peace, run by the Venezuelan government? Finally, Nicolas Maduro has admitted that the NTN24 was shut down upon his order, because it was trying to “torment anxiety about a coup d’etat”. The president insisted that “nobody was going to come from abroad and try to perturb the psychological climate of Venezuela”. Oh well, we’ll see.

The movie industry is trying a different approach towards piracy, recognizing that the people they tried to criminalize are actually their best customers. "We know that the people that infringe content are the most valuable audience group," Liz Bales of The Industry Trust says. “Piracy, it’s a crime” and “You can click but you can’t hide” are slogans from two familiar anti-piracy campaigns launched by the movie industry in the 2000s. Despite these efforts, unauthorized copying grew in popularity over the past decade, spurred on by better broadband connections and cheaper bandwidth. Perhaps of even greater interest, there was also a counterproductive element to this negative messaging which the movie industry overlooked. Pirates are actually the industry’s most valuable customers. In recent years several studies have shown that those who share movies illegally tend to spend more on legal entertainment. This finding is now recognized by the Industry Trust For IP Awareness, which includes all major Hollywood studios among its members. “We know that the people that infringe content are the most valuable audience group,” Liz Bales, Director of the Industry Trust says. “They go to the cinema more than the national average, they are buying more Blu-rays than anyone else. They are more likely to have a Sky subscription and they are massively in love with Lovefilm and Netflix,” Bales told TechRadar. With the above in mind, the movie industry has been rolling out a new series of anti-piracy PSAs. Instead of criminalizing their own audience, the campaigns gently suggest that their customers should pirate a little less. “It’s saying that we know you love movies and value that you are spending money on movies but we just want you to do a bit more of the right things and less of the infringement,” Bales explains. In other words, the messaging has become more positive, pointing out that there are plenty of legal options to choose from. The latest video in this series focuses on the upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man 2 release. Using the slogan “moments worth paying for” the video points out that people can also pay for their movies, hoping it will encourage pirates to pay more often. Whether these positive campaigns will prove successful remains to be seen, but it’s a refreshing approach for sure.

Perhaps it's not much of a surprise, but the day after the Oscar award ceremony the winning films are in high demand among pirates. The number of people sharing "12 Years A Slave" via BitTorrent tripled, and the number of "Gravity" downloads more than doubled. With 7 Oscars Gravity was the big winner at the Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday evening. However, the Oscar for the best motion picture went to 12 years a Slave. While the makers of both films couldn’t be happier, there’s also a dark side to this success. Soon after the Hollywood festivities ended, the number of downloads for both films gradually increased. For example, the number of 12 Years a Slave pirates downloading the film via BitTorrent tripled, resulting in more than 100,000 extra downloads on Monday. The interest in 7-time Oscar winner Gravity increased as well, as the number of active downloaders on the most popular torrent more than doubled. The temporary boost in piracy is a recurring phenomenon for Oscar winners. The same happened to The Hurt Locker, which prompted movie studio Voltage Pictures to sue tens of thousands of downloaders. Whether the makers of Gravity and 12 Years a Slave have similar plans has yet to be seen.

Over the past eight years Germany has earned a reputation as a leader when it comes to file-sharing settlement demands and last year was no different. New stats reveal 446 rightsholders sent 109,000 threat letters in 2013, seeking a cool 90.3 million euros ($124m) in compensation. The file-sharing settlement business has humble roots, but is now turning into big business. As revealed last week, Rightscorp is growing its operation in leaps and bounds, obtaining tens of thousands of settlements from US-based users on behalf of rightsholders. While Rightscorp seeks small settlements of a few dollars per alleged offense, other companies really do earn their copyright troll label with demands for thousands of dollars/euros per infringed item. US citizens have parted with millions of dollars in recent years but spare a thought for the people of Germany, who were introduced to this model in the middle of the last decade. Information supplied to TorrentFreak by Christian Solmecke of the Wilde Beuger Solmecke law firm, shows that plenty of well-known companies are involved in the German settlement market. Record companies EMI, Sony and Warner, US porn trolls Malibu Media, plus big movie companies including Universal and Twentieth Century Fox were all active last year. New figures made available by IGGDAW, an interest group that works with targets of predatory rightsholders, reveal that the business has shown little sign of let up during the past 12 months. During 2013, a total of 108,975 threat letters were sent out to Internet users, a modest decrease of 1.3% over the number sent in 2012. As can be seen in the chart below, the number is thankfully just a fraction of the huge numbers sent in 2009 and 2010. While the number of threats sent is slightly down, rightsholders and law firms involved are both on the rise. A total of 446 rightsholders employed 72 law firms to send out letters in 2013, versus 422 and 65 respectively in 2012. Content-wise, the greatest number of settlement requests were sent out for regular movies (‘spielfilm’) with 43.9% of the total. Adult movies (‘porno’) trailed quite a way behind in second place with 24.2%. Music tracks came a close third with 22.8% of the total. For yet another year the all-important settlement numbers make for bleak reading. In 2012 the average amount demanded from letter recipients was 796.87 euros ($1,094), an amount that increased to 829.11 euros ($1,140)in 2013. Multiply that by the number of threats sent (108,975) and we reach a figure in excess of 90.3 million euros, or around $124 million. How many people actually settle remains unclear but German law is geared up to put pressure on Internet users to pay up. So where now for Germany? It was hoped that new legislation (Improper Business Practices Act) introduced last October would assist by imposing transparency requirements on law firms sending out letters and capping the amounts they can claim. But according to Christian Solmecke, the law firms involved have adjusted accordingly. “The new rules do not go far enough. The position in which internet users find themselves is hardly any better than that in which they were in before the legislation came into force,” he concludes.

In another sporadic show of force against file-sharers in Japan, police have arrested 19 people said to have illegally shared popular anime shows and movies without permission from rightsholders. Following pressure from copyright holders Japan introduced new legislation in 2012 that would see the downloading of unauthorized content turned into a serious criminal offense. Those involved, even on a small scale, now face up to two years in jail. The first big crackdown followed in February 2013, when police carried out searches on 124 locations and arrested 27 people suspected of sharing music, movies, TV shows, games and software without permission. Now, almost exactly a year later, authorities have been flexing their muscles again, this time in pursuit of those sharing videos online. According to Anime News Network, between February 25-27 police raided 123 locations across the country searching for 24 anime pirates using sharing software including Cabos, Share, Perfect Dark and the infamous Winny. As of last Friday, police had arrested 19 suspects including a 51-year-old company man said to have uploaded several anime videos without permission. Although P2P file-sharing use is reportedly on a downward trend, figures released last year by the Recording Industry Association of Japan suggested that the country’s tough legislation had done nothing to boost music sales.

Spammers keep using a feature in Google Chrome to fill people’s browsers with unwanted advertisements. Google Chrome had a feature that could silently automatically update everything (including extensions). This means that it’s only up to the user to decide whether the owner of an extension is trustworthy. However, it suddenly turned out that ownership of Chrome extensions can be easily transferred to another party, with users never being informed about this. Perhaps, malware and adware vendors are just showing up at the doors of extension authors, asking to sell their products. After the deal is finished and the ownership of the extension is transferred, the new owners can do whatever they want – for example, release an ad-filled update over Chrome’s update service, sending the adware out to everyone. Security experts had to admit that it wasn’t necessarily Google’s fault, but vendors were exploiting Google’s extension system to set up a subpar browser. The tech giant admitted that it knows about the problem and promised to change Chrome’s extension policy in June 2014. Google explained that the new policy will require browser extensions to serve a single purpose and this requirement will put an end to the adverts. So, the users suffering from lots of annoying adverts can disable Chrome extensions, especially the more obscure ones. Some of the most discontent users complain that advertising people screw up people’s lives and are part of the reason the others cannot have nice things.

Popcorn Time, a cross-platform and BitTorrent-powered movie streaming app, may very well be Hollywood's worst nightmare. The software can be best described as a Netflix for pirates, allowing users to stream the latest blockbusters at no cost. TF talks to one of the developers to find out how the app came about. Over the years BitTorrent has become fairly mainstream, with hundreds of millions of people using torrent clients to download the latest entertainment. Despite its popularity the downloading process can be cumbersome at times, especially for novices. Faced with this challenge Sebastian, a designer from Buenos Aires, Argentina, decided to come up with a piece of software that would make the process as easy as Netflix. “As a designer I love the challenge of simplification. Take something hard for the common user and make it usable. I have a lot of friends who don’t understand torrents and I wanted to make it easy and effortless to use torrent technology,” Sebastian tells us. A few months of coding later “Popcorn Time” was born, a tool that allows users to stream popular movie torrents with the click of a button. Popcorn Time offers instant access to hundreds of films, in various qualities and complete with subtitles if needed. What started out as an experiment for a group of friends soon developed into something much bigger. Popcorn Time now has 20 collaborators on Github and continues to expand at a rapid pace. Developers from all over the world have added new features and within 24 hours it was translated into six languages. Sebastian explains that Popcorn Time uses node-webkit and is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It’s basically a browser that users HTML, CSS and JavaScript to serve the movie streams. “The technology behind the app is very simple. We consume a group of APIs, one for the torrents, another for the movie info, and another for the poster. We also have an API for the subtitles. Everything is automated, we don’t host anything, but take existing information and put it together,” Sebastian says The torrent files all come from YTS (formerly YIFY), which has an API Popcorn Time taps into. The application can search this database and allows users to stream the torrent on demand. When finished the app will continue to share for a while after the download is finished, to avoid leeching. Since Popcorn Time links to a lot of copyrighted movies, Hollywood is not going to be happy, but according to Sebastian the developers don’t expect any legal issues. They inform users that sharing copyrighted material is not allowed everywhere, and other than that they are just repackaging existing content, without a commercial angle. “We don’t expect legal issues. We don’t host anything, and none of the developers makes any money. There are no ads, no premium accounts, and no subscription fees or anything like that. It’s an experiment to learn and share,” Sebastian notes. All the people who work on the project are big movie fans themselves, and most have Netflix accounts. Sebastian believes that going to the cinema is the best way to experience a movie, but if people who want to enjoy a recent film at home they should be able to do so. This is often not the case, and that’s where Popcorn Time comes in. “We hate that we don’t have the chance to watch some movies at home. Popcorn Time is an experiment to show that you can do something better for the users, and that you can do it with BitTorrent,” Sebastian says. Popcorn Time is officially still in Beta, and will continue to improve in the weeks and month to come. However, one thing will never change, it will remain free and open source for as long as it exists.

Russia's Facebook vKontakte is preparing steps to have it declassified as a rogue site by the U.S. Trade Representative. That will mean the introduction of filtering technology to identify and delete millions of infringing MP3s, movies and TV shows from the social networking giant, with Internet-wide implications. Every year the Special 301 Report identifies countries thought by the United States Trade Representative to pose the biggest intellectual property-related threats to U.S. companies. Russia has been a ‘priority’ country for some time, not least due to the actions of one of its biggest and most influential websites. VKontakte (In Touch), is Russia’s Facebook. It’s a huge operation with tens of millions of users, each of whom has the ability to upload music, movies and TV shows to share with their friends. And with their friends’ friends. And with their friends’ friends’ friends. Needless to say, entertainment companies aren’t pleased that this social networking giant is facilitating piracy on a grand scale, especially when that content – music in particular – goes on to fuel countless free MP3 download portals all around the Internet. If you’ve ever downloaded MP3s from the free web, chances are some of that music has come from VK. For some time VK has been keen to update its image by making steps towards becoming more rightsholder-friendly. That said, it’s never really been enough for the U.S. and as a result Russia has again found itself on the latest Special 301 Report. But there signs that things could be getting more serious. VK Executive Director Dmitry Sergeyev told ITAR-TASS yesterday that consultations between his company and rightsholders were underway, with a view to the signing of an anti-piracy memorandum with telecoms regulator Roskomnadzor. As the government outfit at the center of Russia’s web-blocking mechanism, Roskomnadzor has significant power. Its anti-piracy memo deals with the pre-trial settlement of disputes between sites and copyright holders and requires signatories to implement content fingerprinting and identification systems in order to filter and block unauthorized material. “VKontakte will introduce content identification, which will be used to monitor and promptly delete published content protected by copyright,” a source close to the company said. “This will be the first step towards eliminating the social network from of the U.S. Trade Representative’s Special 301 Report, which is currently limiting the company’s ability to raise funds abroad and sign agreements with foreign rightsholders.” Anti-piracy memorandum signatory the Russian Anti-Piracy Organization (RAPO) will be the messenger of progress. The group says it will monitor VK for pirate content in the months to come and if there is significant improvement, the MPAA will be informed. “During this year, the industry will be observing what is happening to the sites, including VK.com,” RAPO chief Konstantin Zemchenkov said. “If pirate content disappears from the social network, we’ll report to the MPAA, which in turn will report that fact to the IIPA [international Intellectual Property Alliance], which will inform the US authorities.” Since the Special 301 Report is based on the previous years’ data, even in the event of progress VK won’t be able to get off the list until 2015. The site has been included since 2011, so removal isn’t going to come easy. Other local sites, such as RUtracker.org and Rapidgator, remain on the list as thorns in the side of the U.S.

Millions of people use a VPN service to protect their privacy, but not all VPNs are as anonymous as one might hope. In fact, some VPN services log users' IP-addresses for weeks. To find out how secure VPNs really are TorrentFreak asked the leading providers about their logging policies, and more. By now most Internet users are well aware of the fact that pretty much every step they take on the Internet is logged or monitored. To prevent their IP-addresses from being visible to the rest of the Internet, millions of people have signed up to a VPN service. Using a VPN allows users to use the Internet anonymously and prevent snooping. Unfortunately, not all VPN services are as anonymous as they claim. Following a high-profile case of an individual using an ‘anonymous’ VPN service that turned out to be not so private, TorrentFreak decided to ask a selection of VPN services some tough questions. By popular demand we now present the third iteration of our VPN services “logging” review. In addition to questions about logging policies we also asked VPN providers about their stance towards file-sharing traffic, and what they believe the most secure VPN is. — 1. Do you keep ANY logs which would allow you to match an IP-address and a time stamp to a user of your service? If so, exactly what information do you hold and for how long? 2. Under what jurisdictions does your company operate and under what exact circumstances will you share the information you hold with a 3rd party? 3. What tools are used to monitor and mitigate abuse of your service? 4. In the event you receive a DMCA takedown notice or European equivalent, how are these handled? 5. What steps are taken when a valid court order requires your company to identify an active user of your service? 6. Is BitTorrent and other file-sharing traffic allowed on all servers? If not, why? 7. Which payment systems do you use and how are these linked to individual user accounts? 8. What is the most secure VPN connection and encryption algorithm you would recommend to your users? — What follows is the list of responses from the VPN services, in their own words. Providers who didn’t answer our questions directly or failed by logging everything were excluded. Please note, however, that several VPN companies listed here do log to some extent. The order of the lists holds no value. Private Internet Access 1. We absolutely do not log any traffic nor session data of any kind, period. We have worked hard to meticulously fork all daemons that we utilize in order to achieve this functionality. It is definitely not an easy task, and we are very proud of our development team for helping Private Internet Access to achieve this unique ability. 2. We operate out of the US which is one of the few, if only, countries without a mandatory data retention law. We explored several other jurisdictions with the help of our professional legal team, and the US is still ideal for privacy-based VPN services. We severely scrutinize the validity of any and all legal information requests. That being said, since we do not hold any traffic nor session data, we are unable to provide any information to any third-party. Our commitment and mission to preserve privacy is second to none. 3. We do not monitor any traffic, period. We block IPs/ports as needed to mitigate abuse when we receive a valid abuse notification. 4. We do not host any content and are therefore unable to remove any of said content. Additionally, our mission is to preserve and restore privacy on the Internet and society. As such, since we do not log or monitor anything, we’re unable to identify any users of our service. 5. Once again, we do not log any traffic or session data. Additionally, unlike the EU and many other countries, our users are protected by legal definition. For this reason, we’re unable to identify any user of our service. Lastly, consumer protection laws exist in the US, unlike many other countries. We must abide by our advertised privacy policy. 6. We do not discriminate against any kind of traffic/protocol on any of our servers, period. We believe in a free, open, and uncensored internet. 7. Bitcoin, Ripple, PayPal, Google Play (Mobile), OKPay, CashU, Amazon and any major Gift Card. We support plenty of anonymous payment methods. For this reason, the highest risk users should definitely use Bitcoin, Ripple or a major gift card with an anonymous e-mail account when subscribing to our privacy service. 8. We’re the only provider to date that provides a plethora of encryption cipher options. We recommend, mostly, using AES-128, SHA1 and RSA2048. Private Internet Access website 1. We do not keep any logs whatsoever. 2. The jurisdiction is Canada. Since we do not have log files, we have no information to share. We do not communicate with any third parties. The only event in which we would even communicate with a third-party is if we received a court order. We would then be forced to notify them we have no information. This has not happened yet. 3. If serious abuse is reported we enable tcpdump to confirm the abuse and locate the user. These dumps are immediately removed. If the user is abusing our service they will be terminated permanently but we have never shared user information with a 3rd party. 4. We do not have any open incoming ports, so it’s not possible for us to “takedown” any broadcasting content. 5. We take every step within the law to fight such an order. 6. Yes, all types of traffic our allowed with our services. 7. We accept PayPal and Bitcoin. All payments are linked to users accounts because they have to be for disputes and refunds. 8. 256-bit AES is the most secure. However 128-bit blowfish is plenty good. If you’re concerned about surveillance agencies such as the NSA, their capabilities are shrouded in secrecy and claiming to be able to protect you is offering you nothing but speculation. As far as what’s publicly available for deciphering encryption, both of the encryptions I mentioned are more than sufficient. TorGuard 1. TorGuard does not store any IP address or time stamps on any VPN and proxy servers, not even for a second. Further, we do not store any logs or time stamps on user authentication servers connected to the VPN. In this way it is not even possible to match an external time stamp to a user that was simultaneously logged in. Because the VPN servers utilize a shared IP configuration, there can be hundreds of users sharing the same IP at any given moment further obfuscating the ability to single out any specific user on the network. 2. TorGuard is a privately owned company with parent ownership based in Nevis and our headquarters currently located in the US. Our legal representation at the moment is comfortable with the current corporate structuring however we wouldn’t hesitate to move all operations internationally should the ground shift beneath our feet. We now offer VPN access in 23+ countries worldwide and maintain all customer billing servers well outside US borders. We would only be forced to communicate with a third-party in the event that our legal team received a court ordered subpoena to do so. This has yet to happen, however if it did we would proceed with complete transparency and further explain the nature of TorGuard’s shared VPN configuration. We have no logs to investigate, and thus no information to share. 3. Our network team uses commercial monitoring software with custom scripts to keep an eye on individual server load and service status/uptime so we can identify problems as fast as possible. If abuse reports are received from an upstream provider, we block it by employing various levels of filtering and global firewall rules to large clusters of servers. Instead of back tracing abuse by logging, our team mitigates things in real-time. We have a responsibility to provide fast, abuse-free VPN services for our clients and have perfected these methods over time. 4. In the event of receiving a DMCA notice, the request is immediately processed by our abuse team. Because it is impossible for us to locate which user on the server is actually responsible for the violation, we temporarily block the infringing server and apply global rules depending on the nature of the content and the server responsible. The system we use for filtering certain content is similar to keyword blocking but with much more accuracy. This ensures the content in question to no longer pass through the server and satisfies requirements from our bandwidth providers. 5. Due to the nature of shared VPN services and how our network is configured, it is not technically possible to effectively identity or single out one active user from a single IP address. If our legal department received a valid subpoena, we would proceed with complete transparency from day one. Our team is prepared to defend our client’s right to privacy to the fullest extent of the law. 6. BitTorrent is only allowed on select server locations. TorGuard now offers a variety of protocols like http/socks proxies, OpenVPN, SSH Tunnels, SSTP VPN and Stealth VPN (DPI Bypass), with each connection method serving a very specific purpose for usage. Since BitTorrent is largely bandwidth intensive, we do not encourage torrent usage on all servers. Locations that are optimized for torrent traffic include endpoints in: Canada, Netherlands, Iceland, Sweden, Romania, Russia and select servers in Hong Kong. This is a wide range of locations that works efficiently regardless of the continent you are trying to torrent from. 7. We currently accept payments through all forms of credit or debit card, PayPal, OKPAY, and Bitcoin. During checkout we may ask the user to verify a billing phone and address but this is simply to prevent credit card fraud, spammers, and keep the network running fast and clean. After payment it is possible to change this to something generic that offers more privacy. No VPN or Proxy usage can be linked back to a billing account due to the fact we hold absolutely no levels of logging on any one of our servers, not even timestamps! 8. For best security we advise clients to choose OpenVPN connections only, and if higher encryption is called for use AES256 bit. This option is available on many locations and offers excellent security without degrading performance. For those that are looking to defeat Deep Packet Inspection firewalls (DPI) like what is encountered in countries such as China or Iran, TorGuard offers “Stealth” VPN connections in the Netherlands, UK and Canada. Stealth connections feature OpenVPN obfuscation technology that causes VPN traffic to appear as regular connections, allowing VPN access even behind the most strict corporate wifi networks or government regulated ISPs. Privacy.io 1. We do not log any information on our VPN servers. The only scenario is if a technical issue arises, but we request permission from the user first, and we only do it for the duration of the job, and then it is removed. 2. We are in the process of moving jurisdictions away from Australia at present as we are unsure what our current government plans to do in regards to our privacy. We have not decided where yet. 3. Only SMTP port 25 is filtered to mitigate spam, but we are working on some tools to make it easier for users to send mail. 4. Any DMCA request is ignored, as we have no logs to do anything about them. 5. Same as above, as we do not log, so we are unable to provide any information. If the law attempts to make us do such things, we will move our business to a location where that cannot occur, and if that fails we will close up shop before we provide any information. 6. All protocols are allowed with our service, with the only exception of SMTP port 25 currently being filtered. 7. At present we only accept PayPal and CC (processed by PayPal), but we are looking into alternative types of payments. We go out of our way to make sure that PayPal transactions are not linked to the users, we generate a unique key per transaction to verify payment for the account is made, and then nuke that unique key. Bitcoin and Litecoin are also on the agenda. 8. At present we offer 128 bit for PPTP and 256 bit for OpenVPN, We plan to offer stronger encryption for the security conscious. VikingVPN 1. No. We run a zero knowledge network and are unable to tie a user to an IP address. 2. United States, they don’t have data retention laws, despite their draconian surveillance programs. The only information we share with anyone is billing information to our payment gateway. This can be anonymized by using a pre-paid anonymous card. If asked to share specific data about our users and their habits, we would be unable to do so, because we don’t have any logs of that data. 3. That is mostly confidential information. However, we can assure our users that we do not use logging to achieve this goal. 4. In the event of a DMCA notice, we send out the DMCA policy published on our website. We haven’t yet received a VALID DMCA notice. 5. We exhaust all legal options to protect our users. Failing that, we would provide all of our logs, which do not actually exist. If required to wiretap a user under a National Security Letter, we have a passively triggered Warrant Canary. We would also likely choose to shut down our service and put it up elsewhere. 6. Yes. Those ports are all open, and we have no data caps. 7. We currently only take credit cards. Our payment provider is far more restrictive than we ever imagined they would be. We’re still trying to change payment providers. Fortunately, by using a pre-paid credit card, you can still have totally anonymous service from us. 8. A strong handshake (either RSA-4096+ or a non-standard elliptic curve as the NIST curves are suspect). A strong cipher such as AES-256-CBC or AES-256-GCM encryption (NOT EDE MODE). At least SHA1 for data integrity checks. SHA2 and the newly adopted SHA3 (Skein) hash functions are also fine, but slower and provide no real extra assurances of data integrity, and provide no further security beyond SHA1. The OpenVPN HMAC firewall option to harden the protocol against Man-in-the-Middle and Man-on-the-Side attacks. IVPN 1. IVPN’s top priority is the privacy of its customers. We use non-persistent logs (stored in memory) which are deleted after 10 minutes. That tiny window gives us the ability to troubleshoot connection issues, whilst still making it practically impossible for any 3rd party to match an IP to a time-stamp. 2. IVPN is incorporated in Malta. We would ignore any request to share data unless it was served by a legal authority with jurisdiction in Malta in which case we would inform them that we don’t have the data to share. If we were served a subpoena which compelled us to log traffic we would find a way to inform our customers and relocate to a new jurisdiction. 3. We use a tool called PSAD to mitigate attacks originating from customers on our network. We also use rate-limiting in iptables to mitigate SPAM. 4. We ensure that our network providers understand the nature of our business and that we do not host any content. As a condition of the safe harbor provisions they are required to inform us of each infringement which includes the date, title of the content and the IP address of the gateway through which it was downloaded. We simply respond to each notice confirming that we do not host the content in question. 5. Assuming the court order is requesting an identity based on a timestamp and IP, our legal department would respond that we don’t have any record of the user’s identity nor are we legally compelled to do so. 6. We ‘allow’ BitTorrent on all servers except gateways based in the USA. Our USA network providers are required to inform us of each copyright infringement and are required to process our response putting undue strain on their support resources (hundreds per day). For this reason providers won’t host our servers in the USA unless we take measures to mitigate P2P activity. 7. We currently accept Bitcoin, Cash and PayPal. No information relating to a customers payment account is stored with the exception of automated PayPal subscriptions where we are required to store the subscription ID in order to assign it to an invoice (only for the duration of the subscription after which it is deleted). Of course PayPal will always maintain a record that you have sent funds to IVPN but that is all they have. If you need to be anonymous to IVPN and don’t wish to be identified as a customer then we recommend using Bitcoin or cash. 8. We recommend and offer OpenVPN using the strongest AES-256 cipher. For key exchange and authentication 2048-bit RSA keys are used (which RSA claims are sufficient until 2030). PrivatVPN 1. We don’t keep ANY logs that allow us or a 3rd party to match an IP address and a time stamp to a user our service. The only thing we log are e-mails and user names but it’s not possible to bind an activity on the Internet to a user. 2. We operate in Swedish jurisdiction. Since we do not log any IP addresses we have nothing to disclose. Circumstances doesn’t matter in this case, we have no information regarding our customers’ IP addresses and activity on the Internet. Therefore we have no information to share with any 3rd party. 3. If there’s abuse, we advise that service to block our IP in the first instance, and second, we can block traffic to the abused service. 4. This depends on the country in which we’re receiving a DMCA takedown. For example, we’ve received a DMCA takedown for UK and Finland and our response was to close P2P traffic in those countries. 5. If we get a court order to monitor a specific IP then we need to do it, and this applies to every VPN company out there. 6. Yes, we allow Torrent traffic. 7. PayPal, Payson and Plimus. Every payment has an order number, which is linked to a user. Otherwise we wouldn’t know who has made a payment. To be clear, you can’t link a payment to an IP address you get from us. 8. OpenVPN TUN with AES-256. On top is a 2048-bit DH key. PRQ 1. No. Wo do not log anything and we only require a working e-mail address to be a customer. 2. Swedish. We do not share information with anyone. 3. Not disclosed. 4. Put it in the trash where it belongs! 5. None, since we do not have any customer information and no logs. 6. We host anything as long as it’s not SPAM related or child porn. 7. Visa/Mastercard, Bitcoin, PayPal. No correlation between payment data and customer data. 8. We provide OpenVPN services (along with dedicated servers and other hosting services). Astrill 1. We do not keep logs. Customers share the same public IP address by default, unless they opt for a dedicated IP. Therefore, technically, it’s impossible to trace online activity and link it with a real person. We collect personal information (Email, name, address, phone) which is used by our credit card processors. In a case customer pays using other means, we don’t need any such information, customers can enter any fake information as they desire. 2. We are a Seychelles company, therefore we will disclose information about a customer, if a customer can be identified at all, and only if this was requested through legal channels of the Republic of Seychelles. 3. We may enable logs on a server in case of network abuse reported by our Internet provider to identify the customer (for example spamming is the most frequent abuse). In some cases network abuses are not deliberately caused by customers, for example their system may be infected by malware sending spam. In such case, we will ask the customer to clean their system with an anti-virus software. 4. We do not store any files, we provide IP transit only. Therefore, we can’t fulfill any “takedown”. All P2P-related DMCA notices are trashed and customers will never see them. These complaints have no technical ground, IP addresses are not persons and most of DMCA notices are extortion attempts, therefore illegal. We have a strong legal team so DMCA notices are of least possible concern to us. 5. The majority of users use shared IP space therefore we are not able to identify the customer. Our answer is something like: “Unfortunately we were not able to identify the customer from the information you have sent us. Due to deficiency of IPv4 address space, thousands of customers share the same IP address. Therefore it’s impossible for us to provide further information.” 6. P2P activity is allowed on many of our servers in USA, Europe, Asia. On some servers, as we have to abide by AUP of our Internet providers, P2P is blocked in our firewall. This is something we hate to do. 7. We provide all popular payment methods, from credit cards, PayPal, Alipay to anonymous methods like BitCoin, Perfect Money and coupons which can be purchased through our resellers network. With standard payment methods, our credit card processors will keep transaction logs with all information provided by customers. There’s nothing we can do regarding that – credit cards are never meant to be anonymous payment methods. Therefore, we offer BitCoin, PM and coupons for customers who prefer complete anonymity. In such case they can provide no information or fake information, we don’t care. 8. We provide all standard VPN protocols: OpenVPN, SSTP, Cisco IPSec, L2TP/IPSec, PPTP. We offer all standard encryption algorithms, for example BlowFish 128-512 bit, AES 127-256 bit. We also offer European and Japanese standards, which are not “approved” by NSA. For example Camellia 128-256bit and CAST 128-512 bit (used also by PGP software). It’s up to the customer which standard they prefer, NSA approved AES or other algorithm. Of all VPN protocols, we don’t recommend PPTP. Other protocols are considered secure by security experts. AES-256 is used by banks. Mullvad 1. No. This would make both us and our users more vulnerable so we certainly don’t. To make it harder to watch the activities of an IP address from the outside we also have many users share each address, both for IPv4 and our upcoming IPv6 support. 2. Swedish jurisdiction. Under no circumstance we will share information with a third-party. First of all we take pains to not actually possess information that could be of interest to third parties, to the extent possible. In the end there is no practical way for the Swedish government to get information about our users from us. 3. We don’t monitor our users. In the rare cases of such egregious network abuse that we can’t help but notice (such as DoS attacks) we stop it using basic network tools. 4. There is no such Swedish law that is applicable to us. 5. We make sure not to store sensitive information that can be tied to publicly available information, so that we have nothing to give out. We believe it is not possible in Swedish law to construct a court order that would compel us to actually give out information about our users. Not that we would anyway. We started this service for political reasons and would rather discontinue it than having it work against its purpose. 6. Yes. 7. Bitcoin (we were the first service to accept it), cash (in the mail), bank transfers, and PayPal / credit cards. Payments are tied to accounts but accounts are just random numbers with no personal information attached that users can create at will. With the anonymous payments possible with cash and Bitcoin it can be anonymous all the way. 8. We use OpenVPN. We also provide PPTP because some people want it but we strongly recommend against it. Encryption algorithms and key lengths are important but often get way too much attention at the expense of other important but harder to measure things such as leaks and computer security. Source: http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-services-take-your-anonymity-seriously-2014-edition-140315/

Empornium is recruiting! As the site is all volunteer staff we often need more hands to help out in many roles. This is where we look to our cummunity. Beyond the obvious of Server techs and Coders who we are always recruiting we need general moderators. We generally start such people in a general support role called FLS or First Line Support while we get to know them. All volunteers will have their forum and site history checked and small groups will be selected (based on who we think best fits the role) at any time so the current staff are not overwhelmed with teaching new people the tools we use. General Moderation roles include such things Checking Torrent Presentations Answering questions both technical and site related in staff PM's (this is the initial FLS role) Answering questions on the forums Running events and games for the community Dealing with ratio cheats Organising groups such as the tag team Anything i have forgotten So if you are highly active and want to help please post here (in the forums) and we will take you into consideration P.S We are still desperate for Coders. Even if you can only spare an hour or two a week it could help. PHP and C++. Coders are best to send a Staff PM to Senior Technologist+ rather than posting here