Tracker's Name : DeshiHD Genre : MOVIES / TV Sign-up Link : http://deshihd.com/index.php?page=account Additional information : DeshiHD is an INDIAN Private Torrent Tracker for MOVIES / TV

More than two-thirds of all millennials admit to having downloaded or streamed pirated content, a new survey from Anatomy Media finds. The same group also has a high preference for ad-blocking, which is believed to be directly related to the high prevalence of invasive ads on pirate sites. Despite the availability of many legal services, piracy remains rampant among millennials in the United States. This is one of the main conclusions of the “Millennials at the Gate” report, released byAnatomy Media. The report is based on a comprehensive survey of 2,700 young millennials between 18 and 24, and zooms in on piracy and ad-blocking preferences in this age group. The results show that more than two thirds, a whopping 69%, admit to using at least one form of piracy to watch video. Online streaming is by far the most popular choice among these pirates, whether it’s on the desktop (42%) or via mobile (41%). Torrenting, on the other hand, is on the decline and is stuck at 17% in this age group. Piracy preferences Streaming from unofficial sources is so dominant now that Anatomy Media decided to come up with a new word for those who engage in it: striminals. Whether they seriously considered the better fitting “striminalennials” is unclear. “These streaming millennial criminals, or what we call ‘striminals,’ watch what they want, when they want, where they want, and they don’t pay for it,” the company explains. Interestingly, 67% of all millennials believe that streaming unauthorized content is perfectly legal. Only 18% believe that it is wrong to stream content without paying for it. It’s worth highlighting that it’s up for debate whether the term “criminal” accurately describes people who casually stream unauthorized videos. Attempts to make streaming a felonypreviously failed in the United States congress. In addition to online piracy, young millennials are quite fond of ad-blockers. The report shows that two out of three use a mobile or desktop ad-blocker, or both. Ad-blocking preferences Interestingly, there is a direct link between the use of ad-blockers and online piracy. Millennials who are into mobile piracy use mobile ad-blockers more often, while desktop pirates have a higher preference for desktop ad-blockers. Anatomy Media suggest that piracy and ad-blocking might reinforce each other. Online pirates may be more likely to use ad-blockers because pirate sites are often ad-ridden, they argue. However, this causal relationship wasn’t researched. Piracy and ad-blocking While the above paints a grim picture for media companies, not all is lost according to Anatomy Media. The company, which conveniently specializes in “creative advertising,” says that a better viewing experience could encourage millennials to move over to the right side. “Young millennials’ dissatisfaction with their viewer experience and their overwhelming adoption of ad blockers is a call-to-action to improve the viewer experience and review the nature of the digital ad experience,” the report concludes. “Millennials will accept advertising as long as it is restrained, targeted and relevant,” the company self-servingly adds. https://torrentfreak.com/millennials-love-piracy-ad-blockers-160920/

Sitelock, one of the world's leading website security companies, is using the DMCA to silence a vocal critic. Web design and services outfit White Fir Design has published several articles about Sitelock, but now the company has hit back by filing DMCA notices against screenshots included in White Fir's reports. The takedown provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act are most closely associated with alleged infringement in the file-sharing space. As a result, millions of notices are sent to a wide range of websites, not least Google’s search. As a recent case involving Warner illustrated, erroneous notices can prove controversial, but perhaps the most egregious examples involve efforts to silence critics under the guise of protecting copyrights. One such situation appears to be underway between two players in the website security sector. In the blue corner stands SiteLock, the self-professed “Global Leader in business website security solutions.” With more than 8,000,000 customers worldwide, it’s more than likely that its logo (shown bottom right in the image below) is familiar to readers. Sitelock’s product range is impressive but no matter what it does, the company cannot seem to impress White Fir Design, its rival in the blue corner. For the past few years, web design and security company White Firhas been publishing articles critical of SiteLock. In 2014, for example, the company published a piece declaring that Sitelock was poor at protecting its clients. This was followed by several others continuing on the same theme, including a May 2016 piece declaring that Sitelock was scamming its customers. Clearly, things were beginning to heat up. It’s not clear whether Sitelock disagrees with any of White Fir’s critique but the company has certainly noticed the articles published web outfit. That became evident this week when Sitelock filed DMCA notices against two pieces published by White Fir. “We have seen a lot of ridiculous stuff from SiteLock recently, but this has to take the cake,” White Fir said in a statement. “They have now filed a DMCA takedown notice against our website for including a screenshot of their homepage in one [of] our posts.” The screenshot posted by White Fir originally appeared in an articlewhich claimed how Sitelock had placed their seal of approval on a site, despite it being dangerous for visitors. The screenshot has now been removed but a copy can be seen below. THE ALLEGEDLY-INFRINGING SCREENSHOT The resulting DMCA notice from SiteLock claims that White Fir’s use of the screenshot is infringing. “My name is Logan Kipp, I am contacting you on behalf of my company SiteLock, LLC. A website that your company hosts at IP *66.39.94.41 (WHITEFIRDESIGN.COM) is infringing on at least one copyright owned by SiteLock, LLC,” the complaint to White Fir’s hosting company reads. “Content has been taken from our official websites, SiteLock.com and wpdistrict.sitelock.com, and used without the authorization of SiteLock, LLC on the website WHITEFIRDESIGN.COM.” The second complaint Sitelock filed against White Fir concerned a piece published early September which alleged that SiteLock had reported certain versions of WordPress as having “critical” vulnerabilities when in fact they did not. To support their critique, White Fir included a screenshot of a table published by SiteLock. It’s clear that White Fir had the right to do so under Fair Use but SiteLock’s Logan Kipp felt otherwise, filing a complaint with White Fir’s host. “I request that you immediately notify the infringer of this notice and inform them of their duty to remove the infringing material immediately, and notify them to cease any further posting of infringing material to your server in the future,” SiteLock told the host. “If service providers do not investigate and remove or disable the infringing material [safe harbor] immunity is lost. Therefore, in order for you to remain immune from a copyright infringement action you will need to investigate and ultimately remove or otherwise disable the infringing material from your servers with all due speed should the direct infringer, your client, not comply immediately.” Quite why White Fir chose to comply with SiteLock’s takedown demands is unclear, as the usage of the screenshots is legal for the purposes of news reporting and critique. However, as White Fir point out, if the aim was to silence them, that has backfired. “What makes this even more ridiculous is [SiteLock] clearly now know that their post is showing that they lack a basic understanding of WordPress security, but instead of fixing their post, they are trying to hide you from seeing an image on our website,” White Fir explain. “The only reasonable explanation we can think of for them doing this is that they thought they could get the pages those images were on removed by filing [the complaint], because removing the images alone doesn’t do anything to cover up what they are up to.” And so the DMCA wars continue…. https://torrentfreak.com/web-security-firm-sitelock-uses-dmca-to-censor-critics-160920/

Entertainment industry workers usually speak about illegal downloading in the harshest of terms but for one former Disney executive, it has its upsides. Speaking at the huge All That Matters conference, Samir Bangara admitted that he "loves" piracy as it's a great indicator of content popularity. The piracy debate can be broadly split into two camps – those who believe it’s a destructive thing that needs to be stopped at all costs, and those who maintain the phenomenon has its upsides. Unsurprisingly, many of those in the first camp hail from entertainment industry companies with a shared mission to harness every possible sale. As a result, they’re often united when it comes to condemning unauthorized sharing and downloading. Every now and again, however, someone comes along with a controversial opinion of their own. Samir Bangara is the former managing director of The Walt Disney Company in India (Disney UTV). Appointed in 2012, Bangara helped to drive growth in video, games and audio for mobile, online and interactive TV following a restructuring of Disney’s digital assets. Later, Bangara left Disney to form media startup Qyuki.com as MD and CEO. Qyuki is a platform for artists to share their creations, connect with others, and generate revenue. With these goals in mind, one might think the company would take an anti-piracy stance. Instead, its MD suggests otherwise. “I’m going to put it out there. I love piracy,” said Bangara during the huge All That Matters content conference in Singapore. With key players from Netflix, Spotify, Merlin, FOX, Universal, Warner, UFC, Disney, Beggars Group and RIAJ all speaking at the event, Bangara’s statement probably raised a few eyebrows. However, there was method in his madness. According to Mumbrella, the former Disney boss believes that one of the main problems in today’s content-rich world is getting noticed. “I love piracy. Because guess what, the biggest problem right now is discoverability,” Bangara told a panel moderated by Tony Zameczkowski, Vice President of Business Development for Asia-Pacific at Netflix. While Bangara’s love of piracy probably wasn’t shared by many in attendance, illicit consumption has always been useful for showing what is popular among the fans. Indeed, the concept is one Netflix is very familiar with. Back in 2013, the streaming platform revealed that it had been monitoring pirate sites in order to gauge the popularity of shows. The data compiled by Netflix was subsequently used to decide which shows to invest in. The company could buy with confidence, safe in the knowledge that the content they were buying had already been tested in the market. With huge volumes of content available online, Bangara says that finding the good stuff can be a challenge. But knowing in advance what will work is definitely an advantage. “There are tens of thousands of hours of content getting uploaded. The challenge is finding what is working,” he told the panel. “What is getting pirated is by default working. Game of Thrones is great, so it’s going to get pirated,” he said. Netflix took the same approach when it launched in the Netherlands. The company discovered that Prison Break was “exceptionally popular” on pirate sites, so took the decision to buy the show. Of course, not everyone listening to Bangara shared his love of piracy. Shufen Lin, Vice-President & Head at Singapore-based telecoms and content company Starhub, said that piracy was “the biggest thing that keeps us awake at night.” Interestingly, however, Lin says the challenge presented by piracy in Singapore isn’t simply competing with ‘free’, at least not in the traditional sense. By Western standards, Singapore has strict censorship in place, meaning that content available on torrent sites provides an attractive alternative to locally censored material. In reality, many companies use piracy networks to gather information which helps their businesses. In most cases, they just aren’t as up front about it as Bangara or indeed Netflix. https://torrentfreak.com/former-disney-digital-boss-says-he-loves-piracy-160919/

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Android devices with modified Kodi software installed continue to prove popular among the pirating masses. However, a ruling from the EU Court this week will make life more difficult for suppliers. That's the opinion of Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, who say that sellers will now have to verify if the links contained in such devices are infringing. While millions of people around the globe share files using BitTorrent every day, there are some who prefer to stream their content instead. These users can easily visit any one of thousands of streaming portals via a desktop web browser but for those looking for complete convenience, set-top boxes offer a perfect solution. These devices, often Android-based, regularly come with the Kodi media center already installed. However, Kodi provides no illegal content – custom addons do – and it’s their inclusion in the package that provides users with what they want – free (or cost reduced) movies, TV, and sports. One of the groups trying to crack down on so-called “fully loaded” boxes is Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN. The organization has threatened legal action against several local suppliers and has hadone case referred to the European Court. However, a decision in a separate case last week could have big implications for “fully loaded” box supply across Europe, BREIN says. The case, which involved Dutch blog GeenStijl.nl and Playboy, resulted in an important ruling from the European Court of Justice. The Court found that when “hyperlinks are posted for profit, it may be expected that the person who posted such a link should carry out the checks necessary to ensure that the work concerned is not illegally published.” In other words, posting links to infringing content in a commercial environment amounts to a communication to the public, and is therefore illegal. For groups like BREIN, the ruling opens up new avenues for anti-piracy action. For sellers of piracy-capable boxes and related IPTV subscriptions across the EU, trouble could lie in wait. “Copyright protection organization BREIN holds suppliers of IPTV devices responsible for verifying whether their sources for internet TV channels are legal or not. In general, this is not the case,” BREIN said in a statement this week. “Suppliers advertise that when buying their service you do not have to pay separately for pay-channels for films, TV shows, and sports. Such a compilation costs a fraction of the total sum of subscriptions to the individual channels.” BREIN says that following the decision of the European Court of Justice last week, commercial suppliers of IPTV boxes are now obliged to verify whether the sources being linked in their devices are authorized by the content providers. If they are not, the seller could be held liable for infringement. If BREIN’s interpretation of the decision proves correct, sellers of “fully-loaded” Kodi and other IPTV boxes face a minefield of uncertainty. There is absolutely no way vendors can check every single link contained in the software present in the boxes they sell. Furthermore, those links are often updated automatically, meaning that what is legal on the day they are sold might not be legal when the software updates tomorrow. But while it’s certainly possible that BREIN’s take on the decision will prove to be correct, actually enforcing the law against hundreds or even thousands of suppliers is likely to prove impossible. Big suppliers are easily targeted though, which may send out a warning. “BREIN has written letters to suppliers of IPTV subscriptions to warn them that they are required to verify beforehand whether the sources for the IPTV channels they use are legal. If the suppliers are not willing to do so, then BREIN will institute court proceedings,” BREIN says. However, more often that not “fully loaded” boxes are offered for sale on eBay and Amazon by regular people out to make a few bucks. Taking action against every single one is not realistic. But even if all infringing boxes were wiped from sale, that wouldn’t stop people selling blank devices. These can be easily setup by the user to stream all of the latest movies, sports and TV shows with a few clicks, rendering a smart supplier immune from liability. And of course, anyone with VLC Media Player and the ability to Google can find plenty of dedicated IPTV streams available online, without paying anyone a penny. https://torrentfreak.com/has-the-eu-just-outlawed-fully-loaded-kodi-boxes-160918/

In the ongoing copyright infringement lawsuit against alleged pirate sites Sci-Hub, Libgen and Bookfi, academic publisher Elsevier wants help from Cloudflare. The publisher informs the court that a subpoena against Cloudflare is needed to expose the personal details of the sites' owners. Elsevier is one of the largest academic publishers in the world. Through its ScienceDirect portal the company controls access to millions of scientific articles spread out over thousands of journals, most of which are behind a paywall. Not all academics are happy with these restrictions that hamper their work. As a result, hundreds of thousands of researchers are turning to ‘pirate’ sites such as Sci-Hub, Libgen and Bookfi to access papers for free. Elsevier views these sites as a major threat to its business model and last year it filed a complaint at a New York District Court, accusing the sites’ operators of systematic copyright infringement. The publisher managed to obtain a preliminary injunction to seize the sites’ domain names. However, the case is still ongoing and the three sites in question continue to operate from new domains. Over the past several months a lot of media coverage focused on Sci-Hub and its operator Alexandra Elbakyan. However, Elsevier still has no clue who’s behind the other two sites. With help from Cloudflare, it hopes to fill in the gaps. Earlier this week Elsevier submitted a motion for leave to take discovery (pdf), so it can demand logs and other personally identifiable data about the operators of Libgen and Bookfi from Cloudflare. Both sites previously used Cloudflare’s CDN services and the publisher is hoping that they still have crucial information on file. Elsevier already tried to obtain the host IP addresses of the sites through the “Trusted Reporter” program, but Cloudflare replied that it could not share this info for sites that are no longer active on its network. In addition to contacting Cloudflare, the academic publisher also requested information from Whois Privacy Corp. – the domain registration anonymization service used by both Libgen.org and Bookfi.org – but the company hasn’t responded to these requests at all. “Elsevier has used all of the tools at its disposal in its attempt to identify the operators of Libgen.org and Bookfi.org,” Elsevier informs the court. “However, as a consequence of the Defendants’ use of various service providers to anonymize their identities, as well as the nonresponsiveness of those service providers to Elsevier’s requests to date, these efforts have thus far been fruitless.” According to Elsevier, a court-ordered discovery subpoena is the only option to move the case forward and identify the defendants behind Libgen and Bookfi. “As a result, Elsevier has exhausted all other reasonable options and now must now seek this Court’s intervention in order to obtain identifying information concerning John Doe Defendants […] from CloudFlare: a business which has had direct dealings with both Libgen.org and Bookfi.org,” Elsevier adds. Since neither Libgen not Bookfi are currently using Cloudflare’s services, it remains to be seen whether the company still has the site’s old IP-addresses and other information on file. On Thursday the court granted Elsevier’s leave to take discovery ordering CloudFlare to save all relevant logs until a final discovery decision is taken. Before that happens, CloudFlare will have a chance to respond to the request. To leave room for the possible discovery process, Elsevier previously asked for the pretrial hearing to be postponed. It will now take place late October. Meanwhile, the websites continue serving ‘pirated’ papers and books through their new domain names at golibgen.io, bookfi.net and sci-hub.cc. https://torrentfreak.com/elsevier-wants-cloudflare-to-expose-pirate-sites-160917/

A lawyer who represents Julian Assange and took part in The Pirate Bay trial says a file-sharing case he's currently involved in has the most unreasonable claims for damages he's ever seen. Per E. Samuelson says the case against the founder of torrent site SwePiracy contains a claim for more than $3m in damages, for a single movie. Founded back in 2006, SwePiracy grew to become one of the most famous private torrent sites on the Swedish scene. With that reputation came attention from anti-piracy groups and local authorities In the wake of the “guilty” verdict in the Pirate Bay trial during April 2009, SwePiracy disappeared offline. It reappeared just a few weeks later. Anti-piracy group Antipiratbyrån (now Rights Alliance) said that during this downtime, the operators of the site took measures to improve their security. However, three years later those efforts proved futile. In February 2012, police in Sweden and the Netherlands took coordinated action to shut down the site and earlier this year its 24-year-old operator appeared in court for the first time facing several years in prison. Despite the prosecution admitting that the site had likely been created for fun, it’s alleged SwePiracy raised $100,000 from donations. As a result, the pursuit of damages against its operator was to be made “according to The Pirate Bay model”, i.e extremely aggressively. This week the now 25-year-old appeared in court again, facing charges that he assisted in the unlawful distribution of a large number of movies. As is customary in such cases, the prosecution has homed in on a smaller sample of 27 movies in its evidence. “They earned a lot of money, they spread huge amounts of pirated content and this [man] is one of the key players. Therefore, it is important that those involved are sentenced to severe punishment,”said Henrik Pontén of Rights Alliance, who represent Nordisk Film, one of the plaintiffs in the case. One of five companies acting against SwePiracy, Nordisk is reportedly being the most aggressive. The film distributor is demanding more than $3m (20m kronor) in damages for a single low-budget movie. SwePiracy defense lawyer Per E. Samuelsson, who also represents Julian Assange and previously took part in The Pirate Bay trial, says the claims are the most unreasonable he’s ever witnessed in his 35 years as a lawyer. “I think this is the most unreasonable claim for damages I have been through. The idea that [this type of film] could cause 20-25 million kronor in damages on an illegal file-sharing site is totally absurd from every point of view,” he said. Swedish news outlet SVT reported an exchange in court between Samuelsson and Pontén, in which the former argued that his client had started the site as a child, for fun. “My client started [SwePiracy] when he was 14 years old. It was purely a prank,” Samuelsson said. “That’s not true,” Pontén objected. “He was not fourteen years old when he committed these acts. At some point, he has certainly been fourteen, but when he did this he was criminally responsible and earned lots of money.” The verdict will be handed down at a later date. https://torrentfreak.com/torrent-site-founder-faces-outrageous-damages-claim-lawyer-says-160917/

Tracker's Name : PrivateHD Genre : HD MOVIES / TV Sign-up Link : https://privatehd.to/auth/register Additional information : PrivateHD is a Private Torrent Tracker for HD MOVIES / TV

Tracker's Name : AvistaZ (AsiaTorrents) Genre : ASIAN MOVIES / TV / GENERAL Sign-up Link : https://avistaz.to/auth/register Additional information : AvistaZ (AsiaTorrents) is a Private Torrent Tracker for ASIAN MOVIES / TV / GENERAL

Tracker's Name : CinemaZ (EuTorrents) Genre : FOREIGN NON-ASIAN MOVIES Sign-up Link : https://cinemaz.to/auth/register Additional information : CinemaZ (EuTorrents) is a Private Torrent Tracker for FOREIGN NON-ASIAN MOVIES

Tracker's Name : LibraNet (LN) Genre : EBOOKS / LOSSLESS MUSIC Sign-up Link : http://libranet.org/signup.php Additional information : LibraNet (LN) is a HUNGARIAN Private Torrent Tracker for EBOOKS / LOSSLESS MUSIC

This week the U.S. sent notice to Polish authorities indicating it wants to extradite Artem Vaulin, the alleged owner of KickassTorrents. Vaulin's defense team is reviewing the request but warns that the case is turning into an international due process problem, as he is still unable to meet his U.S. counsel. In July, Polish law enforcement officers arrested Artem Vaulin, the alleged founder of KickassTorrents, who’s been held in a local prison since. Polish authorities acted on a criminal complaint from the U.S. Government, which accused him of criminal copyright infringement and money laundering. Last month the 30-year-old Ukrainian was indicted together with two co-conspirators, all with ties to Ukraine. While the fate of the other two is unknown, we’ve learned that the U.S. Government has now officially requested Vaulin’s extradition. TorrentFreak spoke with Vaulin’s U.S. counsel Ira Rothken who informed us that the U.S. sent official notice of the extradition request to Poland this week. The defense team is still working on getting the paperwork translated back into English so they can respond, but meanwhile they highlight another crucial issue. Even though nearly two months have passed, the alleged KickassTorrents owner still hasn’t been allowed to meet with his U.S. defense team. A clear due process violation, according to Rothken. “We still have not had an opportunity, nor have we been granted access, to meet with Artem Vaulin in prison in Poland. So we now believe that this has ripened into an international due process problem. “We believe that Artem’s rights are now being impacted with his inability to communicate with U.S. counsel,” Rothken tells TF. While Vaulin is allowed to meet with his Polish lawyer, Rothken stresses that this is not enough, since the case deals with a U.S. indictment, under U.S. law, based on evidence gathered by the United States of America. “There’s no way that there could be a fair trial in the United States, or a fair extradition process, without Artem being able to have access to U.S. counsel, to learn his rights, to be able to galvanize the evidence, and to do so in a robust and expedient manner,” Rothken tells TF. This issue doesn’t only apply to the U.S. case, but also affects the extradition process and proceedings, which have just begun. In recent weeks Vaulin’s defense team have exhausted every option they have to set up a meeting with the U.S. counsel, but all requests have been rejected so far. “We have gone through all the hurdles that we could possibly go through with the Polish authorities. Right now there’s simply no proper basis for them not to give access, other than the fact that they’re involved in procedural gamesmanship,” Rothken says. Instead, the defense sees no other option than to raise the issue in court. They plan to do so in the near future and hope to have the case dismissed as a result of these due process problems. “Right now we think the only remedy can be that when you go ahead and interfere with a U.S. defendant having access to his U.S. counsel, the entire case should be dismissed in the interest of justice,” Rothken concludes. More news about the due process problems and the extradition process is expected to become available as the case evolves. https://torrentfreak.com/alleged-kickasstorrents-owner-u-s-counsel-160916/

The Court of Justice of the European Union has found that the operator of an open WiFi network can not be held liable for infringements carried out by his users. The case involved Pirate Party member Tobias McFadden who was accused by Sony of enabling music piracy. Countless individuals and businesses around Europe operate open WiFi networks, but what happens when those networks are used by third parties to infringe intellectual property rights? Pirate Party member Tobias McFadden runs a lighting and sound system shop in Germany and as part of his customer service and marketing efforts, he’s been operating an open WiFi network. Six years ago, this policy landed him in trouble with a major recording label. In 2010, McFadden received a claim from music company Sony who alleged that his open WiFi had been used to offer one of their albums online without permission. Sony demanded a range of measures from McFadden, including preventing future infringement by password protecting the WiFi network, blocking file-sharing ports, and logging/blocking users sharing copyrighted content. Sony also wanted to hold McFadden liable for third party infringement, which led to the case being referred to the European Court of Justice. Yesterday the court handed down its judgment and its largely good news for the Pirate Party member. [T]he Court holds, first of all, that making a Wi-Fi network available to the general public free of charge in order to draw the attention of potential customers to the goods and services of a shop constitutes an ‘information society service’ under the directive on [electronic commerce],” the decision reads. The Court further notes that in order for such ‘mere conduit’ services to be exempt from third party liability, three cumulative conditions must be met: – The provider must not have initiated the transmission – It must not have selected the recipient of the transmission – It must neither have selected nor modified the information contained in the transmission. “[T]he Court confirms that, where the above three conditions are satisfied, a service provider such as Mr McFadden, who provides access to a communication network, may not be held liable,” the judgment reads. “Consequently, the copyright holder is not entitled to claim compensation on the ground that the network was used by third parties to infringe its rights. Since such a claim cannot be successful, the copyright holder is also precluded from claiming the reimbursement of the costs of giving formal notice or court costs incurred in relation to that claim.” However, the decision did not go entirely McFadden’s way. In an effort to strike a balance between protecting a service provider from third party liability and the rights of IP owners, the Court ruled that providers can be required to end infringement. “[T]he directive does not preclude the copyright holder from seeking before a national authority or court to have such a service provider ordered to end, or prevent, any infringement of copyright committed by its customers,” the Court found. One such measure could include the obtaining of an injunction which would force an operator to password-protect his open WiFi network in order to deter infringement. “In that regard, the Court nevertheless underlines that, in order to ensure that deterrent effect, it is necessary to require users to reveal their identity to be prevented from acting anonymously before obtaining the required password,” the ruling adds. On a more positive note, the Court rejected the notion of monitoring networks for infringement or taking more aggressive actions where unnecessary. “[T]he directive expressly rules out the adoption of a measure to monitor information transmitted via a given network. Similarly, a measure consisting in terminating the internet connection completely without considering the adoption of measures less restrictive of the connection provider’s freedom to conduct a business would not be capable of reconciling the abovementioned conflicting rights,” the Court concludes. Commenting on the decision, Marietje Schaake MEP says the ruling could complicate plans for more open access to WiFi. “This may lead to a lot of unnecessary red tape for every small business that currently offers free Wi-Fi. [President of the European Commission] Juncker’s plan to offer free WiFi in European Cities also just became a bit more complicated after this ruling,” Schaake notes. “On a more fundamental level we must remain vigilant that copyright enforcement does not become a Trojan horse for ending online anonymity.” https://torrentfreak.com/eu-court-open-wifi-operator-not-liable-for-pirate-users-160916/

Chrome and Firefox are actively blocking direct access to the The Pirate Bay's download pages. According to Google's Safe Browsing diagnostics service TPB contains "harmful programs," most likely triggered by malicious advertisements running on the site. Comodo DNS also showed a "hacking" warning but this disappeared after a few hours. Starting a few hours ago Chrome and Firefox users are unable to access The Pirate Bay’s torrent download pages without running into a roadblock. Instead of a page filled with the latest torrents, visitors now see an ominous red warning banner when they try to grab a torrent. “The site ahead contains harmful programs,” Google Chrome informs its users. “Attackers on thepiratebay.org might attempt to trick you into installing programs that harm your browsing experience (for example, by changing your homepage or showing extra ads on sites you visit),” the warning adds. Mozilla’s Firefox browser displays a similar message. While Pirate Bay’s homepage and search is still freely available, torrent detail pages now show the following banner. Chrome’s Pirate Bay block Both Chrome and Firefox rely on Google’s Safe Browsing report which currently lists TPB as a partially dangerous site. In addition to the two browsers, people who use Comodo’s Secure DNS also experienced problems reaching the site. Comodo’s secure DNS has a built-in malware domain filtering feature and earlier today it flagged the Pirate Bay as a “hacking” site, as the banner below shows. Shortly before publishing this warning disappeared. Pirate Bay hacking? Comodo DNS still blocks access to ExtraTorrent, the second largest torrent site trailing just behind The Pirate Bay. The secure DNS provider accuses ExtraTorrent of spreading “malicious” content. Interestingly, Google’s Safe Browsing doesn’t report any issues with ExtraTorrent’s domain name, so another source may play a role here. This isn’t the first time that Comodo has blocked torrent sites and usually the warnings disappear again after a few hours or days. Until then, users can add the domains to a whitelist to regain access. Of course, they should do so at their own risk. Chrome and Firefox users should be familiar with these intermittent warning notices as well, and can take steps to bypass the blocks if they are in a gutsy mood. https://torrentfreak.com/chrome-and-firefox-block-pirate-bay-over-harmful-programs-160915/

Tracker's Name : HDArea (HDA) Genre : HD Sign-up Link : http://www.hdarea.co/signup.php Additional information : HDArea (HDA) is a CHINESE Private Torrent Tracker for HD MOVIES / TV

The 28-year-old former operator of a French-based torrent site has been ordered to serve a year in jail and pay a five million euro fine. A moderator received a four-month suspended sentence. Somewhat unusually, four regular users of the site were tracked down by their IP addresses. They too received custodial sentences. Whenever anti-piracy groups decide to take action against large file-sharing platforms, they do so on the basis of achieving crushing punishments for their operators. Only severe punishments can stop hardcore pirates, they argue. In France, a similar situation has been playing out. Back in June 2015 following a four-month investigation, people connected to the public torrent site OMGTorrent were arrested and taken into custody. Early claims suggested the site had offered for download more than 10,000 pirated movies. Founded in 2008, the site had built up a solid userbase of around 3.5 million visitors per month. Police insisted it was a for-profit project. “The people behind this platform do not do it for fun, through the platform they earn a lot of money,” a police spokesperson said at the time. “Even if they offer movies without requesting compensation, they earn money with various advertisements that appear alongside.” Searches of two suspects’ homes yielded several computers plus more than 3.5 terabytes of the latest movies. A separate server found overseas contained several thousand more. Police warned that the site’s operators could face 10 years in jail plus millions in damages, but they weren’t going to stop there. Their investigations had led them to four of the site’s top downloaders who they intended to prosecute for receiving stolen goods. After more than a year, six people connected with the site have now been sentenced and it’s harsh punishments all round. Following a hearing in March, yesterday the Criminal Court of Chalons-en-Champagne (Marne, France) sentenced the founder of OMGTorrent to one year in prison. The 28-year-old was also ordered to pay a fine of around five million euros for the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works. Also sentenced was a 38-year-old woman who had worked as a moderator on the site. She was given a four-month suspended sentence and told to pay damages to the plaintiffs in the case. In an unusual turn of events, prosecutors also tracked down four of the site’s most heavy downloaders. They too were given prison sentences of one month each and are required to settle with rightsholders. Based on an investigation carried out by ALPA (Association Against Audiovisual Piracy), the prosecution estimated that damages exceed 20 million euros. Following the decision, the site’s founder posted an update to theWareziens forum. “I’ve been fined a total of 5,000,000 euros for financial damage, 12 months imprisonment and 4 more [months] from a former sentence. My mod has to pay approximately 1,000,000 euros for financial damage,” he wrote. “Others, those who have downloaded, I don’t know the amount for them, but it far exceeds 500,000 euros. Note: They seized the servers and used them to get the IP addresses of the big downloaders of content.” Lashing out at those who hounded him, the admin said the judgment had really hurt. He said he understands why he needed to be punished but for those lower down the chain, the sentences were “beyond comprehension.” “To all the [anti-piracy groups and authorities]: You are a lot of vile shit, destroying lives of people who are already struggling to pay their rent, their food, their bills,” he said. “Why all this? Because they wanted to watch and because they didn’t necessarily have the capabilities to buy a DVD / BluRay or go to the theaters.” Listing the country’s most popular torrent indexes, trackers and DDL sites, the admin declared that they would never fall. “Warez is a hydra, you cut off one head, 10 will grow back. You’ll never kill this beautiful community. It’s like drug dealers, it will never stop,” he said. Following the raid on OMGTorrent, an unknown third-party managed to secure the domain. The site is now working, as it did before, as a public torrent index. https://torrentfreak.com/torrent-site-founder-moderator-users-receive-prison-sentences-160915/

TorrentHound has decided to shut down its popular torrent site, voluntarily. "Finito," the site's founder informed us in a brief message. Following the demise of KickassTorrents and Torrentz, the surprise shutdown means that three of the ten most visited torrent sites at the beginning of the year are now offline. Founded in 2007, TorrentHound.com has been around for nearly a decade. With millions of visitors per month the site enjoyed a fairly large userbase, but it never reached the status of giants such as The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, and KAT. That said, copyright holders had no trouble finding the site. Over the years TorrentHound became the target of various industrycomplaints and the site was blocked in several countries. Nevertheless, it always remained online, until today. A few hours ago the site’s ‘founder’ sent us an email with an ultra-short message: “Finito.” A quick look at the website shows that this isn’t a prank. TorrentHound is the latest large torrent site to keel over this year. TorrentHound 2007 – 2016 At TorrentFreak we have been keeping a close eye on the torrent ecosystem for more than a decade, but never have we seen so many large sites going offline in such a short period. TorrentHound follows the ‘example’ of KickassTorrents and Torrentz, which went offline in July and August respectively. This means that three sites from our top 10 most-visited torrent sites, are now gone. Neither Torrentz nor TorrentHound have commented in detail on their surprise shutdowns. However, the fact that they followed shortly after KickassTorrents’ alleged operators were inducted by the U.S. Department of Justice, may not be a total coincidence. It’s unlikely that TorrentHound was facing concrete legal pressure as it’s currently linking to various “not terrible” alternative torrent sites on its current homepage. We asked our TorrentHound contact to shed some light on his decision and we will add an update if a response comes in. TorrentHound, a few days ago https://torrentfreak.com/torrenthound-shuts-down-another-big-torrent-site-bites-the-dust-160915/

Today, the European Commission published its long-awaited proposal to modernize the EU's copyright law. Among other things, it will require online services to install mandatory piracy filters. While the Commission intends to strengthen the position of copyright holders, opponents warn that it will do more harm than good. During his State of the Union address today, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced several plans to modernize copyright law in Europe. The proposal (pdf) is part of the Digital Single Market reforms, which have been in the making for several years. Despite earlier suggestions that geo-blocking would be banned for streaming portals such as Netflix, these ideas haven’t made it into the final text. Instead, it introduces a wide range of reforms that improve the position of rights holders. One of the suggestions that has a lot of people worried is Article 13, which requires online services to police pirated content. This means that online services, which deal with large volumes of user-uploaded content, must use fingerprinting and filtering mechanisms to block copyright infringing files. “The Commission proposal obliges such service providers to take appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure the protection of user-uploaded works, for example by putting in place content recognition technologies,” the commission explains. This could, for example, be similar to the Content-ID system YouTube has in place, which hasn’t been without controversy itself. While the Commission stresses that small content platforms won’t be subject to the requirement, the proposal doesn’t define what “small” means. It also fails to define what “appropriate” or “effective” content recognition systems are, creating a fair bit of uncertainty. Article 13 Commenting on the proposal, Digital rights group EDRi says that it will put many European companies at risk while endangering users’ right to free speech. “The text that was launched today includes a proposal to potentially filter all uploads to the Internet in Europe. The draft text would destroy users’ rights and legal certainty for European hosting companies,” EDRi notes. The Commission, however, notes that the changes are needed to reinforce the negotiating position of copyright holders, so they can sign licensing agreements with services that provide access to user uploaded content. Perhaps not surprisingly, this language is directly aligned with recent calls from various music industry organizations. Just a few month ago the BPI asked for new legislation to prevent platforms like YouTube abusing safe harbor protections in order to create “royalty havens”. With the current proposal, this wish has been partly granted. TorrentFreak spoke with Pirate Party Member of Parliament Julia Reda who is fiercely against mandatory piracy filters. “There are countless problems with this approach. First of all, Google spent upwards of $60 million on the development of ContentID. Asking every startup or community project to make the same kind of investment is ludicrous,” Reda says. Most services that deal with user-uploaded content can’t invest millions into content recognition technologies so they would have to license it from others such as YouTube, Reda adds. This will only increase the already dominant positions of the major players. In addition, she points out that automated systems often lead to overt mistakes and are poorly equipped to deal with the finer nuances of copyright. “Just because part of a copyright-protected work shows up in a video, that doesn’t mean that the new work constitutes a copyright infringement,” Reda says. “There are numerous exceptions to copyright such as parody or quotation – different in every EU country – that could justify the re-use of part of a protected work. An algorithm can’t detect that. It will take down lots of legal remixes and mashups, thus stifling freedom of expression,” she adds. A valid comment, as we witnessed ourselves just a few days ago when one of our perfectly legal videos was inaccurately flagged as a copyright infringement. YouTube aside, Reda stresses that there are many other platforms to which automated recognition systems are not well suited. Wikipedia, for example, which uses mostly Creative Commons licensed content, or services such as DeviantArt which hosts user-uploaded artwork, or MuseScore that hosts sheet music. “There is no technology available that would reliably detect copyright infringements in these formats. The Commission is asking Internet companies to do the impossible, thus endangering collaborative communities on the Internet as well as European startups,” Reda tells us. The filtering requirement is not the only plan that’s getting a lot of pushback. Another controversial proposal is the introduction of a new related right for press publications. This allows online newspapers to negotiate licences from third party services that use their texts, such as Google showing article clippings in its news section. Opponents, including several young members of the European Parliament, have dubbed the proposal a “link-tax” and are fiercely against it. #Savethelink “This plan would break the internet as we know it. The way people share news online today – by posting a link that includes a short snippet or image from the article – would be made illegal unless a licence had been previously agreed,” MEP Marietje Schaake says. Considering the stakes at hand, it’s expected that there will be several organized protests, similar to the “Save the Link” campaign, to stop the proposals from becoming law in their current form. https://torrentfreak.com/eu-proposes-mandatory-piracy-filters-for-online-services-160914/

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The UK Government's Digital Economy Bill has moved a step closer to becoming law after its second reading in Parliament. With unanimous support, the current two-year maximum custodial sentence for online piracy is almost certain to increase to a decade. However, the reading also covered other familiar ground - pressure on Google to do something about piracy. In an effort to control the prevalence of online piracy, numerous criminal actions against file-sharers and file-sharing site operators have already taken place in the UK. However, these prosecutions have not been straightforward. Due to UK copyright law allowing for custodial sentences of ‘just’ two years for online offenses, anti-piracy groups such as the Federation Against Copyright Theft have chosen to pursue their own private prosecutions. These have largely taken place under legislation designed for those who have committed fraud, rather than the more appropriate offense of copyright infringement. Physical pirates (CDs, DVDs) can be jailed for up to 10 years under current legislation. During the past few years, there have been lobbying efforts for this punishment to apply both on and offline. That resulted in a UK Government announcement last year indicating that it would move to increase the maximum prison sentence for online copyright infringement to ten years. This proposal was detailed in a draft of the Digital Economy Billpublished in July. If passed into law, it would amend the relevant section of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. That likelihood increased yesterday with the 2nd Reading of the Digital Economy Bill in the House of Commons. Karen Bradley, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, was in attendance. The MP, who was appointed in July, spoke strongly in favor of strict copyright enforcement. “We will help businesses from attacks on their intellectual property. Burglars can be sentenced to ten years in prison, but the criminal gangs that are making vast sums of money through exploiting the online creations of others only face a two-year sentence. We will increase this to ten,” Bradley said. Interestingly, Bradley mentioned a convicted pirate by name. Paul Mahoney ran streaming portal FastPassTV and discussion and linking forum BedroomMedia. After being raided in 2011, the Northern Ireland-based man was sentenced to four years in jail under the Fraud Act, two more than the maximum he would’ve received under copyright legislation. “Criminals like Paul Mahoney, who profited by almost £300,000 and cost industry millions by facilitating access to illegal films on the Internet, need to be sent a clear message,” Bradley said. “We need to ensure that enforcement agencies and their partners have the right set of tools to tackle all types of piracy, which is why this clause is so important.” When the increase to ten years was first reported, some news outlets suggested that regular file-sharers could be subjected to the decade-long sentence. That was addressed in Parliament yesterday by Labour MP Thangam Debbonaire, who welcomed the move but sought assurances that the casual downloader wouldn’t be targeted. “I am pleased that clause 26 amends the current legislation on copyright to bring online criminal penalties for copyright infringement in line with off-line penalties, with a maximum of 10 years’ imprisonment. This will target anyone who infringes copyright in order to make a commercial gain,” he said. “However, I wish to stress to hon. Members and to members of the public that this is not to catch out people who download music and unwittingly download or stream something illegal. I want to make that clear in adding my support to this measure. As far as I understand it, it targets the criminals who make money from distributing music to which they do not have the rights.” Culture Secretary Karen Bradley confirmed that was indeed the case. Speaking in support of the amendment, Conservative MP John Whittingdale said he was “delighted” that online and offline penalties will be equalized but said that more still needs to be done. Unsurprisingly, given the current environment, Google was again the target. “The Conservative party manifesto stated that we would put pressure on search engines to try to prevent illegal sites from coming up at the top of a search. I know that round-table discussions have been taking place for a considerable time, but it is a matter of great concern that no significant progress has yet been made,” Whittingdale said. “In the most recent attempt to find out whether or not there had been an improvement, a Google search was made for ‘Ed Sheeran Photograph download’, with ‘Photograph’ being one of Ed Sheeran’s most recent songs. Only one of the top 10 listings involved a legal site, and the legal site was YouTube, which, of course, is owned by Google.” In response, Labour MP Dr Rupa Huq offered his thoughts on how that might be mitigated in future. “[John Whittingdale] said that Ed Sheeran’s song was available on illegal platforms. Does he agree that technology companies, and platforms such as Google and YouTube, should be compelled to list only legal sites?” Huq said. “At present the pirates are sometimes listed higher up than legal sites, and our British musicians who contribute, I believe, £4 billion annually to the economy are losing out as a consequence.” Whittingdale wasn’t convinced of Huq’s solution, but agreed that much more needs to be done. “I think it would be unrealistic to expect Google to establish whether every single site was legal or illegal. What it can do is react when illegal sites are brought to its attention,” the MP said. “[Google] does de-list, but new sites then appear immediately. There have been a vast number of complaints from rights owners about particular sites, but they should tweak their algorithms so that those sites no longer appear at the top of the search listings. Measures of that kind have been under discussion for months and months, but the problem still exists.” Whittingdale added that there may be a need to include a legal provision which would encourage service providers to establish some kind of voluntary code. “[T]here may well be a case for legislation, because we cannot allow Google and other search providers to go on allowing people access to illegal sites,” he said. The Bill will now move to Committee and Report stages, before moving to its Third Reading. It will then pass to readings in the House of Lords before undergoing amendments and the final stage of Royal Assent. https://torrentfreak.com/10-years-in-prison-for-online-pirates-a-step-closer-in-the-uk-160914/

Today we bring you the next episode of the Steal This Show podcast, discussing the latest file-sharing and copyright trends and news. In this episode we talk to returning guest Holmes Wilson, co-founder of Fight For The Future. Returning guest Holmes ‘I’m on a boat‘ Wilson (Fight For The Future) checks in from… a boat in the harbour of Rio de Janeiro. We discuss the ongoing attempt to extradite Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom to the United States, why Creative Future is publicly dissing his organisation, and what (if anything) should come after big torrent sites. We then take another twenty minutes to discuss how decentralisation of media is contributing to the rise of the kek-worshipping alt-right. How does P2P affect political power in general? And what’s the importance of meme-creation in a distributed media environment? — Steal This Show aims to release bi-weekly episodes featuring insiders discussing copyright and file-sharing news. It complements our regular reporting by adding more room for opinion, commentary and analysis. The guests for our news discussions will vary and we’ll aim to introduce voices from different backgrounds and persuasions. In addition to news, STS will also produce features interviewing some of the great innovators and minds. https://torrentfreak.com/steal-show-s02e02-platform-160913/

Advertising network JuicyAds has told a California federal court that it's not responsible for pirate sites that use its service to generate revenue. The case is the first where an ad-company stands accused of aiding pirate sites, which has been a major complaint from entertainment industry insiders in recent years. Increasingly, copyright holders are urging third party services to cut their ties with pirate sites. Hosting providers, search engines, ISPs, domain name registrars and advertisers should all do more to counter online piracy, the argument goes. A few weeks ago adult entertainment publisher ALS Scan moved beyond the asking stage. The company filed a complaint at a California federal court, targeting CloudFlare and the advertising network JuicyAds over image copyright infringement carried out by their users. ALS Scan had alerted both companies about the infringing activities of several customers, but neither took action in response and continued to offer their services. “On information and belief, this is because Juicy Ads and Cloudflare make money by continuing to do commerce with sites that draw traffic through the lure of free infringing content,” ALS Scan wrote in their complaint. JuicyAds’ parent company Tiger Media clearly disagrees and has now filed a motion to dismiss the complaint. They argue that, as an advertising service, they can’t be held liable for the allegedly copyright-infringing actions of their clients. Among other things, Tiger points out that the infringing photos in question never appeared on their websites and that they couldn’t remove them even if they wanted to. “ALS does not allege its photos appeared on JuicyAds.com (because they never did) or pass over Tiger’s ad network (because they don’t). Nor does ALS allege that Tiger has the ability to actually disable access to its photos (because it can’t),” Tiger writes (pdf). “Rather, ALS alleges in a conclusory fashion that Tiger is liable because the sites where ALS’s photos appeared were JuicyAds ‘publishers,’ some of more than 92,000 businesses and individuals that participate in the JuicyAds ad network.” The advertising network informs the court that its Terms of Service clearly states that the publishers are solely responsible for the content that appears on their sites. “ALS has not and cannot assert any claims for contributory or vicarious liability, given that Tiger has no more control over publishers’ sites than it does over any other third-party sites.” In addition, the company notes that the advertisements would actually lead people away from the allegedly infringing content, instead of encouraging it in any way. Tiger therefore asks the court to dismiss all copyright infringement claims against them, with prejudice. In addition, yesterday the company submitted its objections against the preliminary injunction requested by ALS Scan. Tiger argues that, based on the evidence provided, there is no need for the extensive piracy policing requirements ALS has proposed. “The proposed injunction would force Tiger to implement wide-ranging content review protocols for all existing and potential publisher customers, in an ongoing effort to identify and ‘weed out’ any potential infringement of ALS’s content by third parties,” Tiger writes (pdf). “This breathtaking request for Tiger to police the Internet is unwarranted because ALS’s motion fails every criterion relating to imposition of a preliminary injunction.” Both the injunction and the motion to dismiss will be considered in a few weeks. Cloudflare has yet to respond to the complaint and was granted an extension of time to file its reply. While ALS Scan and Tiger are relatively small players, a ruling in this lawsuit may set a precedent for future cases. For this reason, it wouldn’t be a major surprise to see other rightsholders and service providers join the case to have their opinions heard. https://torrentfreak.com/advertiser-tells-court-its-not-liable-for-pirate-sites-160913/

Tracker's Name : TheSportsTorrentNetwork (TSTN) Genre : SPORTS Sign-up Link : http://www.tstn.eu/signup.php Additional information : TheSportsTorrentNetwork (TSTN) is a Private Torrent Tracker for SPORTS

Tracker's Name : AlphaRatio (AR) Genre : 0DAY / GENERAL Sign-up Link : https://alpharatio.cc/register.php Additional information : AlphaRatio (AR) is a Private Torrent Tracker for 0DAY / GENERAL