Users of MalwareBytes can no longer access at least two leading torrent sites. Isohunt.to and LimeTorrents are not considered a direct threat but the IP ranges used by the sites are reportedly linked to malicious activity. Additionally, MalwareBytes is also blocking suspect torrent peers due to links to malicious behavior.

Anti-malware software MalwareBytes has proven somewhat of a hit with pirates lately following a rather generous offer.

Rather than punishing people who use unlicensed versions of their software, MalwareBytes’ creators ran an amnesty program through which people could receive a premium product for zero cost.

It’s likely that many of those now using a free key will have accessed their previously unlicensed version from a torrent site. However, a feature present in the premium edition means that at least two of the world’s most popular venues are now completely off-limits to users of the software.

As can be seen from the screenshots below, visitors to Isohunt.to and LimeTorrents.cc – two of the world’s largest torrent sites – are currently rendered inaccessible by MalwareBytes’ “Malicious Website Protection” module.

Puzzled at why the software should take this approach but noting the similarity between the IP addresses used by both sites, TorrentFreak approached MalwareBytes for comment.

“We’re blocking the IPs (amongst others) because there’s a plethora of IPs on the [same network] housing a ton of malvertising and fraud sites,” Malware Intelligence Analyst Steven Burn told TF.

“The ASN involved is thus far unresponsive and has been since March,” he added.

So, while neither Isohunt.to nor LimeTorrents are considered harmful by MalwareBytes, the company has chosen to block their IP addresses due to their proximity to others that are allegedly behaving maliciously.

These two sites are not the only ones affected either. Torrentdownloads.cc, Megafilmeshd.net, ebooks-gratuit.com plus a range of other sites hosted in Ukraine are all blocked by MalwareBytes’ Web Protection module.

While it’s easy to regain access to any blocked site by selecting the appropriate button in the corresponding MalwareBytes popup box, many users are likely to consider blocked sites as dangerous, despite them essentially being victims of someone else’s wrong doing.

Speaking with TF, Isohunt.to told TF that the blocked host in question actually provides a good service.

“These guys webcare360.com provide great hosting that is bulletproofed against different kind of abuses. So a lot of websites around the world use their service,” the site explains.

“Looks like MalwareBytes simply blocked all IP addresses that belong to this hosting provider.”

Another issue that raised its head during our tests is the seemingly random IP addresses MalwareBytes blocks while connecting to certain torrent swarms. On numerous occasions the software flags IP addresses as malicious and denies connections to them. Intrigued, we asked MalwareBytes for an explanation.

“Our main goal is to protect our users from malicious hosts that could either be servers participating in drive-by downloads or even home computers spewing spam,” Jérôme Segura, Senior security researcher at MalwareBytes, told TF.

“So the block of only certain IPs within that pool is simply that. We are blocking the ones that we have identified for malicious activity, which also happen to be torrenting.”

The blocking of these IP addresses raises an interesting dilemma. Due to their connections to suspicious activity elsewhere, MalwareBytes considers them malicious and excludes them. However, it’s worth noting that despite their potential bad deeds elsewhere, peers in a torrent swarm go through a kind of vetting process based on the hash content of the material they’re carrying.

Put simply, while they possibly cause mischief elsewhere, these peers can’t do any real harm to the swarm. Blocking them won’t cause any really serious problems either (unless they’re the only seeder) but since they don’t need to be blocked we asked MalwareBytes about their policy.

“You bring up a very valid comment and something that many people might wonder about. I will pass this information along to see how we can manage this in a better way,” Jérôme Segura notes.

In conclusion, both scenarios (site and peer blocking) are caused by the blocking of IP addresses either directly or loosely connected to malicious activity elsewhere. MalwareBytes users will have to use their discretion when deciding whether to block or allow those connections in future.

The announcement says: "We are performing scheduled site maintenance and should be back online shortly.

Please check back in a few minutes!"

And they are back on track, it hasn't taken too long

Hi!

We decided to move the site to http://thefile.ro

We were hoping for a better life on http://thefile.ro !

We want to create a better environment and safer for you users .

Finally, who does not have account TheFile.Ro can register at:

An artist invited by One Direction to remix one of their tracks as part of a competition has been hit with copyright infringement complaints. Lee Adams' remix of Steal My Girl was uploaded to Soundcloud as required but the track was taken down not once but twice !

In advance of the release of their latest album ‘Four’, One Direction invited remixers and producers from the UK to remix their track Steal My Girl.

“This is a huge opportunity to work with the music and vocals of Harry, Niall, Louis, Liam and Zayn,” said artist network TalentHouse in its introduction.

“After getting involved in remixing himself, Liam Payne wanted to give other people the opportunity. He, and their guest judges including senior A&R and Radio executives from Sony Music, will select one artist to receive a prize of £1,500. The selected remix will be posted to millions of music fans across the band’s official channels and potentially played on radio as an exclusive premiere,” TalentHouse continued.

The competition attracted the attention of UK-based producer and songwriter Lee Adams who took on the remix challenge after using the track stems uploaded to Soundcloud by TalentHouse themselves. Things didn’t go to plan, however.

Even though the stems were put on Soundcloud and entrants were told to upload their remixes there [“Artists must submit their remix via Talenthouse by pasting in their SoundCloud link”], the automated anti-piracy engines of the music site apparently weren’t informed.

“I made my remix, put it on Soundcloud about a week before the contest closing date. About two days later, it was taken down as it had been detected by SoundCloud’s own copyright system as infringement,” Lee informs TorrentFreak.

According to several other complaints left on the competition’s official page, Lee wasn’t the only one affected either. It’s not clear what happened in the other cases but Lee was left to negotiate with SoundCloud over the strike on his account. That didn’t go well either.

“I messaged SoundCloud back saying it was part of a remix contest. Then they told me that doesn’t mean I own the copyright,” Lee says.

“I then explained that if the stems had been put out by the record company officially, then they had given permission. They still argued that I didn’t own the copyright.”

Undeterred, Lee contacted the company running the competition on Sony’s behalf.

“As it was only a couple of days before the contest closed, I emailed TalentHouse themselves to see if they could do anything,” Lee explains.

“They were very good and after a couple of emails SoundCloud reinstated my track. Interestingly, TalentHouse made the comment that ‘this kind of thing happens all the time with SoundCloud’.”

But following months of silence and the ‘infringement’ episode now a fading memory, SoundCloud copyright complaints are again back on the agenda.

“We’ve received a report that your track ‘One Direction – Steal My Girl (Lee Adams Remix)’ contains copyrighted content. As a result, your track has been removed from your profile for the time being,” SoundCloud informed Lee this week.

Having a second complaint filed against his remix upset Lee, who took to Twitter to vent his frustration.

one-direction

“I only remix a song if I am asked to or a public contest is put out officially by a label. If I had just remixed this song unofficially because I wanted to, I think that would be a good claim that I had infringed the copyright,” Lee explains.

It must be noted that the competition rules make it clear that “all rights in materials that are created by entrants using the stems are assigned to Sony Music” but filing copyright infringement complaints against remix competition entrants seems like a particularly poor way to deal with fans.

“To me this is just a poor decision by Sony, maybe they shouldn’t do remix competitions of their artists if they don’t want problems like this. To me it’s a good marketing decision to do a remix competition in the first place but everything that has gone on after has been poor,” Lee concludes.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the original One Direction stems uploaded for the competition are still being offered on SoundCloud for people to remix. However, those tempted to do so should be warned, since re-uploading finished tracks back to SoundCloud risks a potential infringement strike against their account.

Sticky Sunday! Freeleech Picks of the Week

War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State (2013)

New Robert Greenwald doc highlights four cases where whistleblowers noticed government wrongdoing and took to the media to expose the fraud and abuse. It exposes the surprisingly worsening and threatening reality for whistleblowers and the press.

Includes interviews with whistleblowers Michael DeKort, Thomas Drake, Franz Gayland Thomas Tamm and award-winning journalists like David Carr, Lucy Dalglish, Glenn Greenwald, Seymour Hersh, Michael Isikoff, Bill Keller, Eric Lipton, Jane Mayer, & more.

Beyond the Cosmos (2012)

Brian Greene is going to let you in on a secret: We've all been deceived. Our perceptions of time and space have led us astray. Much of what we thought we knew about our universe-that the past has already happened and the future is yet to be, that space is just an empty void, that our universe is the only universe that exists-just might be wrong.

Brian Greene, takes us to the frontiers of physics to see how scientists are piecing together the most complete picture yet of space, time and the universe. With each step, audiences will discover that just beneath the surface of our everyday experience lies a world we'd hardly recognise a startling world far stranger and more wondrous than anyone expected !

The UK Government has announced a new proposal to increase the maximum jail term for online piracy from two to ten years. According to the authorities longer prison sentences are needed to deter large-scale and commercial copyright infringement on the Internet.

In an effort to deter online piracy the UK Government is proposing to increase the maximum prison sentence for online copyright infringement to ten years.

The current maximum of two years is not enough to deter infringers, lawmakers argue.

The new proposal follows a suggestion put forward in a study commissioned by the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) earlier this year.

The study concluded that the criminal sanctions for copyright infringement available under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA 1988) could be amended to bring them into line with related offenses, such as counterfeiting.

According to the Government it’s important that online piracy is seen as “no less serious” than offline infringements, and the increased sentence will put both offenses on par.

“By toughening penalties for commercial-scale online offending we are offering greater protections to businesses and sending a clear message to deter criminals,” says Intellectual Property Minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe.

The proposal is being welcomed by copyright holders who have lobbied extensively to increase penalties for online piracy.

“This consultation is very welcome as we feel there is a clear anomaly in the way that online copyright infringement by criminal enterprises is treated by the justice system,” Eddy Leviten, Director General of the Alliance for Intellectual Property, says.

Although targeted at online piracy, casual file-sharers have little to worry about. The new legislation will be targeted at those involved in organized and commercial copyright infringement. This would include operators of large piracy sites, but not their users.

Before going forward with the proposal the Government is seeking input from the public. A consultation launched today invites supporters and opponents of the plan to chime in, which is likely to trigger a heated debate.

The consultation will run until the end of August and the Government will release the individual responses and publish a summary report afterwards.

Source torrentfreak.com

Following what appears to be a severe penalty, popular torrent site KickassTorrents has become pretty much unfindable in Google. Meanwhile, the top search result in many locations points to a scam site that's serving malware to its visitors. For now, only DuckDuckGo presents the real site as a main result.

kickassWith millions of visitors per day KickassTorrents (KAT) is arguably the most visited torrent site on the Internet, outranking even the notorious Pirate Bay.

After several domain hops KAT has been operating from the KAT.cr domain name for a few months now. However, in recent weeks many infrequent visitors have experienced trouble locating the site, leading to all sorts of problems.

Traditionally, the site has been easy to find through Google by entering the search terms “KickassTorrents” or “Kickass Torrents,” but this is no longer the case.

In fact, the official KAT.cr address is nowhere to be found in the top results. Instead, people see the unknown and unaffiliated Kickasstorrents.eu domain on top in many locations, as the screenshot below shows.

Google’s KickassTorrents search results

googlekick

The KAT team informs us that Google began to penalize its pages a while ago, for reasons unknown. Perhaps there are ways to solve the problems, but the site is currently not doing any search engine optimization (SEO).

“It’s already about five or six months since we started to experience some kind of penalty from Google. The issue is that we were not performing any SEO activities at all,” KAT says.

What makes matters worse is that .eu site which tops Google search results is a scam. It doesn’t offer any torrents but instead prompts visitors to download File_Downloader.exe, which appears to be malware.

The KAT team finds it unfortunate that Google is sending tens of thousands of visitors to a shady site and encourages people to check the official Facebook and Twitter accounts for the latest official domain name.

Interestingly, not all search engines treat KAT the same. In Bing the site’s official domain name is not on top either, but it’s listed on the first page. DuckDuckGo does the best job, identifying the correct domain and even tagging it as an “official site,” which is quite useful to estranged KAT users.

DuckDuckGo’s KickassTorrents search results

duckkick

VPN / Proxy Rules - (pjcnet)

It has come to my attention that a few members are using VPNs or proxies for logging in and surfing this website, I therefore want to ensure that members are very clear on the rules:

Most importantly you should NOT use a VPN or proxy service for signing up, logging in or surfing the website. Appropriate action will be taken against members that break this rule! If you are currently using a VPN or proxy please ensure you disconnect it immediately and never use it again while surfing this website.

Our rules officially still don't allow VPN or proxy use at all, however even though we don't recommend or support them the rules have been relaxed for seeding and leeching purposes ONLY so members can test them at their own risk. Members must however remember to disconnect their VPN / proxy when using the website and if you do wish to use a VPN / proxy please let us know the details of your provider / service you wish to use first by sending a staffbox message. Please do NOT attempt to use any free VPN / proxy services, not only are they more likely to be problematic, but they're also very unlikely to be private or secure.

Early tests show that only some VPN / proxies work properly with our tracker at the time of writing. Please see https://www.blackcats-games.net/foru...howtopic=54051for more information including the latest updates as to which VPN / proxy providers are more likely to work. Also please use this thread to leave feedback regarding testing VPNs / proxies for seeding and leeching ONLY.

Please see https://www.blackcats-games.net/foru...howtopic=54157to discuss this announcement.

In the years since passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), the copyright industries have demanded that online intermediaries — both those covered by the DMCA and those falling outside the statute’s ambit — do more than the law requires to protect their intellectual property rights. In particular, they have sought new ways to reach and shutter “pirate sites” beyond the reach of United States law. Their demands have been answered through an expanding regime of nominally voluntary “DMCA-plus” enforcement.

This chapter surveys the current landscape of DMCA-plus enforcement by dividing such enforcement into two categories: Type 1 and Type 2. Type 1 DMCA-plus enforcement is cooperation by DMCA-covered intermediaries over and above what is required for safe harbor. Type 2 DMCA-plus enforcement is cooperation by intermediaries whose activities fall outside the scope of the DMCA’s safe harbors and who are not liable for their customers’ copyright infringements under secondary liability rules.

As the gap widens between what the law requires and what intermediaries are agreeing to do on a voluntary basis, there is reason to be concerned about the expressive and due process rights of users and website operators, who have no seat at the table when intermediaries and copyright owners negotiate “best practices” for mitigating online infringement, including which sanctions to impose, which content to remove, and which websites to block without judicial intervention.

More than 11,000 people are protesting a proposal which may ban private domain name registrations for millions of websites. The changes would make it easier to identify owners of pirate sites, but the commenters warn that this may have disastrous consequences.

A new ICANN proposal currently under review suggests various changes to how WHOIS protection services should operate.

The changes are welcomed by copyright holders, as they will make it easier to identify the operators of pirate sites, who can then be held responsible.

However, several domain registrars, digital rights groups and the public at large are less enthusiastic. They fear that the changes will also prevent many legitimate website owners from using private domain registrations.

To allow the various parties to weigh in ICANN launched a public consultation, and the overwhelming number of responses over the past several weeks show that domain name privacy is a topic that many people have taken to heart.

At the time of writing ICANN has received well over 11,000 comments, most of which encourage the organization to keep private domain registrations available.

A few dozen comments have been filed by special interest groups, but most were submitted by ordinary Internet users who fear that they will have to put their name, address and other personal details out in public.

Countering the “piracy” argument, several people note that the changes would do very little to stop people from running illegal websites, as WHOIS data can easily be faked.

“The truth is, if the website is an illegal website, then the information in the Whois is not going to be legit anyway. So you are not helping anything when it comes to tracking down crime. You are only helping crime by providing the criminals with more information. On people that are being legal,” one commenter notes.

Others warn that the proposals will leave the door open for all sorts of harassment, or even aid oppressive regimes and terrorist groups including ISIS.

“Please do not make it easier for these oppressive regimes and terrorists to identify and target the brave men and women who risk their lives by writing and blogging about what goes on in those dangerous parts of the world,” a commenter writes.

In large part however, the massive protests are fueled by the “Respect Our Privacy” campaign site which was launched by the EFF, Namecheap and Fight for the Future. This site allows people to submit a pre-written letter in just a few clicks, which results in thousands of duplicate comments.

The MPAA previously criticized the form letters noting that they are triggered by “hype and misinformation sponsored by certain registrars and advocacy groups,” while accusing the campaign site of spreading “completely false” information.

It will be interesting to see how the public consultation will influence ICANN’s proposal and the future operation of domain name privacy services.

The commenting period closes this coming Tuesday and will be followed by an official report. After that, the ICANN board will still have to vote on whether or not the changes will be implemented.

Source torrentfreak.com

The court has directed the internet providers to remove and block websites which contain pirated content of Baahubali

A court here on Friday, directed several internet service providers, to either block or remove pirated content related to SS Rajamouli's Telugu magnum opus Baahubali.

On an appeal made by counsel for petitioner A Venkatesh, additional chief judge G.V.N Bharatha Laxmi directed Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), Reliance Communications, Bharti Airtel and Starnet Online Services, among other internet service providers to desist from providing a platform to any internet user to illegally download, upload or stream the copyrighted content of the movie.

The court added that the internet providers should remove and block the websites and further directed the service providers to block, delete and take down the content immediately, as and when the same is brought to their notice by the petitioners through any media till July 28.

Roguelikes can be huge games. With high difficulty, procedural generation, and plenty of RPG elements to sink your teeth into, you’re potentially looking at hundreds of hours of play out of just one title.

And then someone decided to compile 700 of them into one torrent. Thanks to reddit user foamed, a huge collection of them is available to download for free. All of the games here are totally legal to download, so don’t expect paid-for games such as Dungeons of Dredmor in there.

There are some well-known titles too: Caves of Qud, Angband, Roguelight, and Brogue are among the colossal list of games. Originally the pack included demos of games such as Midboss too, however these have been removed.

As always with huge batch torrents such as this, make sure you’re sure of what you’re downloading. The uploader of the torrent is a moderator on the popular subreddit /r/Games, and has been run through Antivirus scans by other users and has come up clean, but you can never be too careful.

But if you’re a roguelike fan, or someone wanting to explore some of the history behind the genre, this may well be worth a download.

Roguelike Mega Collection 2015. Over 700 free roguelikes bundled together in a torrent.

The most popular Popcorn Time fork has lost control of its domain name. Popcorntime.io was seized by the registry and the domain name is now listed as "reserved". At first sight the application itself appears not to be affected by the domain name problems.

Dubbed the “Netflix for Pirates,” the Popcorn Time app quickly gathered a user base of millions of people over the past year.

Its popularity has also drawn the attention of copyright holders, who’ve made several attempts to shut the service down.

Today Popcorntime.io, the original and most used Popcorn Time fork, became the target of the latest takedown effort.

A few hours ago the domain name’s status was updated to “reserved,” which effectively means that the Internet Computer Bureau registry seized the domain name.

The UK-based registry previously took control of The Pirate Bay’s .ac domain name as well.

Popcorntime.io is “reserved”

The domain name may still work for some if the DNS entries are cached, but it will soon be unavailable everywhere.

At first sight the Popcorn Time application itself appears to work just fine, most likely because it doesn’t use the .io domain for any crucial functions.

Popcorntime.io is not resolving

The server of the Popcorn time site is also unaffected. This means that people who enter the direct IP-address can still see the site’s homepage. However, none of the links work, including the download, as these all point to the .io domain.

TorrentFreak reached out to the Popcorn Time team for more information and we will update the article if we hear back.

The most likely scenario is that the Popcorn Time team will switch over to a new domain name.

They already own popcorntime.re and popcorntime.cc but at the time of writing both point to the seized domain.

Developing story, updates may follow.

Source torrentfreak.com

We are doing some troubleshooting but haven't yet pinpointed the reason for the ratio problem. Our admin will not be available to fully devote his time until next week, so there may be some time before the issue is resolved.

Worst case scenario is we will need to perform a database restore from the last few days. So keep in mind we might travel back in time a few days. This is a problem for any new members who signed up within the last 2-3 days as your accounts would be gone, but we will keep you informed.

Until then, I have decided to activate freeleech to try and prevent unnecessary ratio drain, please let me know if this stops the ratio declines.

Thanks.

- ZDRuX

It is beginning to look like its turning into CHD!

For English users:

All seedbox users please register your seedbox details in this post.

Each successfully registered user will get an exclusive marker.

Wish you have a good day. Best regards!

--------------------------------------------------

The following is what is required in the registration post

For English users:

All seedbox users please register your seedbox details in this post.

Each successfully registered user will get an exclusive marker.

Note: This post has been set to hide, your privacy is under protection.

The details MUST contain following info:

1、seedbox provider and its type

2、purchased website

3、seedbox IP

4、shared IP (Yes or No)

5、bandwidth

6、purchase from agency (Yes or No)

7、expire date (Accurate to date)

Example:

1、France OVH Kimsufi KS-2

2、http://www.kimsufi.com/en/

3、123.123.123.123

4、No

5、download: 100Mbps upload: 100Mbps

6、No

7、2015.Sep.19

Wish you have a good day. Best regards!

At the end of June, a new company walked away with a top-five prize from the competition SeedStars World, held in Capetown, South Africa. The crowd and Judges were wowed by the offering from Custos, a local startup that promises to solve some big problems in the movie industry.

Their intriguing new idea targets movie piracy on BitTorrent. The product demonstrates a lot of promise, at least for studios happy to pay for the service. Ever since BitTorrent became globally popular, movie piracy has been an ongoing thorn in the side of movie makers. By some accounts, it cost the industry as much as $20.5 Billion in the US alone last year.

Developed by researchers at Stellenbosch University, the clever system purports to “turn downloaders against the uploaders,” but only applies to uploads that originate from pre-release copies. These finished movies are usually watermarked and handed out to an approved list of movie critics, academy members, and film festival judges. Although watermarked prior to distribution, these lists have become so long that when a pre-release film end up on the internet the source is hard to track down.

"Our media rights management solution offers rapid detection of compromised media, using a unique technology that turns pirates on each other."

Once a recipient leaks their copy, and after its found on BitTorrent, the very first person to download it will see a unique bitcoin public address attached to it. The address will contain a bounty, which can be verified on the blockchain, and is different for every copy that has been distributed.

Depending on the size of each bounty offered, this may be an easy way to make some money. The simplicity of downloading torrents and reporting the upload to Custos makes the reward a tempting offer. In an interview with TorrentFreak, the company explained:

“Custos embeds watermarks into the analog and/or digital content of media items, which are imperceptible but difficult to remove. Each watermark contains a Bitcoin wallet, with a reward for anyone who anonymously claims it once the media has passed out of the control of the original recipient.”

Although the service could be expanded to include the recording and software industries, Custos has designed their product to target the movie market, offering studios a service that lets them hand out pre-release copies more often, and with far more accountability in the case of a leak. “[The original recipient] could then be subject to financial or legal penalties, or to reduced access to future content,” Custos explained.

While the Custos' solution applies bitcoin to an expensive problem, it only deters copyright infringement during the “Screener Season.” This six week period at the beginning of the year is when movies are being considered for awards, including the Oscars, and copies are handed out to Academy judges.

Throughout the rest of the year pre-release copies on BitTorrent can be quite scarce, and pirated movies primarily come bypassing the Digital Rights Management on retail copies of a movie, or even from people taking a videocamera into a movie theater and simply recording it all in lower quality.

However, the movies released during screener season are some of the most highly sought after and pirated on BitTorrent. The new product would likely have a noticeable impact on the quality of illegally available content, and the finances of the movie makers.

There is one glaring drawback, once a screener is uploaded to the BitTorrent network it cannot be recalled. With prevention a key facet of the business model, Custos would not be likely to pay a second bounty for the same movie. Competition may be fierce, so if you plan to give it a try, make sure you have a fast internet connection and mark your calendar for new year's day.