Happy Hour Friday Once again we are running a Happy Hour Freeleech event. From 0900 - 1500 UTC all torrents on Empornium are freeleech. Have a nice weekend.

Crazyhd.com will become invitation only from September 1st, 2016. ISP owners please email [email protected] with proof of ownership and number of users to receive bulk invites.

I have invites: pretome, HD-Torrents, FreshonTV, IPTorrents, FileList, ImmortalSeed, BitHumen, NordicBits, Xthor, BlueTigers, B2S-Share, UltimateGamer, Inperil, Tekken.

I have invites: pretome, HD-Torrents, FreshonTV, IPTorrents, FileList, ImmortalSeed, BitHumen, NordicBits, Xthor, BlueTigers, B2S-Share, UltimateGamer, Inperil, Tekken.

Kim Dotcom is hoping to have his fight with the U.S. government pushed further into the public consciousness by having his extradition appeal streamed live on the Internet. U.S. authorities are already objecting to Dotcom's application but they could be up against stiff opposition since New Zealand is proud of its courtroom transparency. Earlier this month, Kim Dotcom experienced a setback when the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his efforts to regain control over millions of dollars in assets seized by the US Government. Branding the Megaupload founder a fugitive, the Court effectively denied Dotcom the ability to properly defend himself, should he be extradited to the United States from New Zealand. Together with his former Megaupload colleagues Mathias Ortmann, Bram van der Kolk and Finn Batato, Dotcom was found eligible for extradition to the United States last December. His appeal will take place at the High Court in Auckland this month and Dotcom wants the whole world to see. While many jurisdictions internationally will not grant permission for a live video or audio feed to be transmitted from a courtroom, in New Zealand the proposition is not out of the question. All courts nationwide allow cameras and the recording of proceedings, as long as there are no serious privacy breaches, compromising of witnesses, or risks to the right to a fair trial. Just recently the Chief Justice requested a report from a panel of judges on guidelines relating to recording in court. The report (pdf) found that 93% of District and High Court Judges had not experienced an instance where recording in court had resulted in a fair trial issue arising. While the panel’s recommendations were accepted by the Chief Justice, live-streaming of court proceedings did not receive widespread support among submissions from judges. However, upon successful application and in important cases such as Dotcom’s, such transmissions can go ahead. “Live-streaming may be an available option, particularly if there are fixed cameras in court.Live streaming will remain an option in certain major cases, and would be considered if an application is made,” the Judges’ recommendations read. While it’s possible that Dotcom’s application will be accepted, no feed coming out of the High Court would be truly live. All transmissions would be subjected to a 10-minute delay to protect all parties involved in proceedings. “A meaningful check on actual publication gives Judges and counsel the opportunity to consider evidence as it is adduced, and decide on whether suppression is appropriate in a measured way,” the Judges note. “We are aware of numerous instances when that delay has been critical to give a Judge time to stop an otherwise potentially disastrous publication. A short delay is a small price to pay for in-court coverage.” But while Dotcom and his legal team are clearly in favor of having the six-week hearing transmitted (almost) live, the U.S. Government is reportedly pulling in the opposite direction. Dotcom reports that his application has already received objections from lawyers in the United States. At the time of publication, Dotcom hadn’t responded to our request for comment so the grounds for the US Government’s objection aren’t yet clear. However, the media circuses surrounding the televised trials of both O.J Simpson and Michael Jackson are still within recent memory and under huge scrutiny neither went well for the prosecution. Whether live-streaming is granted or not, Dotcom won’t be giving up the fight, even if his extradition appeal fails. The entrepreneur has already stated that he’ll take his case all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

We are glad to see that more and more works are created by HDChina groups. However, some exclusive works are still forwarded to other trackers or forums at times. So we hope every member observes our forwarding requirements. Please respect uploaders’ requirements if they mark a torrent as exclusive one. The common reason that uploaders set no forwarding may be the copyright. Considering the safety of uploaders themselves, no forwarding is a way to prevent them from serial problems. So please keep the following rules to insure the safety of our tracker. 1.Please notice the no forwarding mark→image 2.Your account on our tracker will be banned if forwarding the exclusive torrents to other trackers or forums. 3.Most of torrents on our tracker are welcome to forward, and please indicate the source while forwarding. 4.It is forbidden to reveal uploaders’ information in any public places, such as Baidu PostBar, Weibo, forums. Please be noticed above, and staff mailbox mailbox if any violating behaviors (details, including urls, screenshots and so on). Our staff will feed back karma points to you once the case is confirmed. Please consciously abide by abovementioned requirements for HDChina’s further development.

TRACKER NAME: Ghost City TRACKER GENRE: General SIGNUP LINK: http://ghostcity.dyndns.info/signup....es&invitehash= CLOSING TIME: Soon ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Ghost City is a GERMAN Private Torrent Tracker for MOVIES / GENERAL

Cloudflare has made it clear that the company isn't going to block piracy sites without a proper court order. In addition, it now opposes an injunction requested by the RIAA, under which it would have to disconnect alleged MP3Skull accounts based on a keyword and IP-address. Representing various major record labels, the RIAA filed a lawsuit against MP3Skull last year. With millions of visitors per month the MP3 download site had been one of the prime sources of pirated music for a long time, frustrating many music industry insiders. Although the site was facing a claim of millions of dollars in damages, the owners failed to respond in court. This prompted the RIAA to file for a default judgment, with success. Earlier this year a Florida federal court awarded the labels more than $22 million in damages. In addition, it issued a permanent injunction which allowed the RIAA to take over the site’s domain names. However, despite the million dollar verdict, MP3Skull still continues to operate today. The site actually never stopped and simply added several new domain names to its arsenal, with mp3skull.vg as the most recent. MP3Skull’s most recent home The RIAA is not happy with MP3Skull’s contempt of court and has asked Cloudflare to help out. As a CDN provider, Cloudflare relays traffic of millions of websites through its network, including many pirate sites. According to the RIAA, Cloudflare should stop offering its services to any MP3Skull websites, but the CDN provider has thus far refused to do so without a proper court order. To resolve this difference of opinion, the RIAA has asked the Florida federal court for a “clarification” of the existing injunction, so it applies to Cloudflare as well. In practice, this would mean that Cloudflare has to block all currently active domains, as well as any future domains with the keyword “MP3Skull,” which are tied to the site’s known IP-addresses. “Cloudflare should be required to cease its provision of services to any of the Active MP3Skull Domains, as well as any website at either 89.46.100.104 or 151.80.100.107 that includes ‘MP3Skull’ in its name,” RIAA argued. RIAA’s request However, Cloudflare believes that this goes too far. While the company doesn’t object to disconnecting existing accounts if ordered to by a court, adding a requirement to block sites based on a keyword and IP-address goes too far. The proposed injunction goes well beyond the scope of the DMCA, the CDN provider informs the court in an opposition brief this week (pdf). “…Plaintiffs’ proposed injunction would force Cloudflare —which provides services to millions of websites— to investigate open-ended domain letter-string and IP address combinations to comply with the injunction. “Cloudflare believes that this Court should hold the Plaintiffs accountable for following clear rules of the road,” Cloudflare adds. The company suggests that the court could require it to terminate specific accounts that are found to be infringing, but doesn’t want to become the RIAA’s copyright cop. “What Cloudflare cannot do, and which the Court should not require, is to serve as a deputy for the Plaintiffs and their RIAA trade association in investigating and identifying further targets of an injunction.” To outsiders the difference between RIAA’s request and what Cloudflare suggests may seem small, but the company draws a clear line to prevent having to scan for pirate sites, proactively. This could turn into a slippery censorship slope, they feel. This isn’t the first time that the RIAA has requested a keyword ban. In a similar case last year Cloudflare was ordered to terminate any accounts with the term “grooveshark” in them. However, in this case the RIAA owned the trademark, which makes it substantially different as it doesn’t involve the DMCA. The EFF applauds Cloudflare’s actions and hopes the court will properly limit the scope of these and other blocking efforts. “The limits on court orders against intermediaries are vital safeguards against censorship, especially where the censorship is done on behalf of a well-financed party,” EFF’s Mitch Stoltz writes. “That’s why it’s important for courts to uphold those limits even in cases where copyright or trademark infringement seems obvious,” he adds. The Florida court is expected to rule on the RIAA’s injunction demands during the days to come, a decision that will significantly impact future blocking requests.

In recent months CloudFlare has been called out repeatedly for offering its services to known pirate sites, including The Pirate Bay. These allegations have now resulted in the first lawsuit after adult entertainment publisher ALS Scan filed a complaint against CloudFlare at a California federal court. As one of the leading providers of DDoS protection and an easy to use CDN service, Cloudflare is used by millions of sites across the globe. This includes many “pirate” sites who rely on the U.S. based company to keep server loads down. The Pirate Bay is one of the best-known customers, but there are literally are thousands of other ‘pirate’ sites that use services from the San Francisco company. As a result, copyright holders are not happy with CloudFlare’s actions. Just recently, the Hollywood-affiliated group Digital Citizens Alliance called the company out for helping pirate sites to stay online. Adult entertainment outfit ALS Scan agrees and has now become the first dissenter to take CloudFlare to court. In a complaint filed at a California federal court, ALS describes piracy as the greatest threat to its business. The rise of online piracy has significantly hurt the company’s profits, they argue, noting that “pirate” sites are not the only problem. “The problems faced by ALS are not limited to the growing presence of sites featuring infringing content, or ‘pirate’ sites. A growing number of service providers are helping pirate sites thrive by supporting and engaging in commerce with these sites,” ALS writes (pdf). These service providers include hosting companies, CDN providers, but also advertising brokers. The lawsuit at hand zooms in on two of them, CloudFlare and the advertising provider Juicy Ads. According to the complaint, both companies have failed to cut their ties with alleged pirate sites, even though they received multiple takedown notices. CloudFlare and Juicy Ads’ terms state that they terminate accounts of repeat infringers. However, according to ALS both prefer to keep these sites on as customers, so they can continue to profit from them. “Even though the law requires parties to terminate business with repeat infringers, and even though both Juicy Ads and Cloudflare’s own terms state that they will terminate business with repeat infringers, neither Juicy Ads nor Cloudflare has terminated its business accounts with these chronic direct infringers. “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,” the company writes. The complaint lists Imgchili.net, Slimpics.com, Cumonmy.com, Bestofsexpics.com and Stooorage.com and CloudFlare customers that host copyright infringing material from ALS, and as of today these sites are still using the CDN provider’s services. Juicy Ads reportedly terminated the accounts of several infringing sites after they learned about the lawsuit, but that doesn’t mean that it can escape liability for its earlier actions. ALS holds both companies responsible for various counts of copyright and trademark infringement, for which it demands actual and statutory damages. With hundreds of works at stake, theoretical damages can run to dozens of millions of dollars. Both CloudFlare and Juicy Ads have yet to file a formal response to the allegations.

The UK Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit has just announced the appointment of a new dedicated officer to head up anti-piracy drive Operation Creative. The initiative, which disrupts websites providing unauthorised access to copyrighted content, also welcomes its seventh backer in the form of the Music Publishers Association. Back in 2013, major torrent sites began receiving letters from the UK’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), a City of London Police unit tasked with identifying organized crime groups in order to disrupt their activities. Behind the scenes, the fledgling Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) had been working with the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), the British Recorded Music Industry (BPI) and The Publishers Association with the aim of closing as many torrent and streaming sites as possible. In time, this initiative became known as Operation Creative, a multi-pronged effort to reduce piracy using a variety of tactics, including the targeting of domains and the disruption of revenue streams. The latter included the development of the Infringing Website List (IWL), a blacklist of websites distributed to potential advertisers and agencies who are asked to boycott the domains in the name of supporting creators. The police, on the other hand, reportedly placed their own ads on some ‘pirate’ sites in an effort to scare would-be pirates. Operation Creative is now in its third year and with that anniversary comes the appointment of a brand new senior officer to head up the initiative. Detective Constable Steve Salway joins PIPCU having spent time at the National Fraud Investigation Bureau (NFIB) as a disruptions team investigator. During his time there, Salway is reported to have overseen the closure of “hundreds of criminal websites” worldwide. While NFIB is involved in tackling IP infringement, the unit also has responsibility for investigating a wide variety of online crimes including financial fraud and identity theft. Salway’s work there crossed over with PIPCU operations and enticed him in. “Operation Creative is leading the way in disrupting UK online digital piracy, and now it’s time to take success to the next level by exploring different tactics like maximising disruption opportunities around criminal revenue,” Salway says. “My experience in tackling online crime and closing down criminal internet infrastructures will be applied to all future referrals and I am proud to be part of this new era for the initiative.” PIPCU’s new dedicated officer puts the successes of Operation Creative down to the strength of the partnerships the police have forged with the private sector. In addition to FACT, BPI and The PA, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), PRS for music and the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE) are all members. Coinciding with Salway’s appointment, the initiative now welcomes a new member in the form of the Music Publishers Association (MPA). The MPA has a mission to “safeguard and promote” the interests of music publishers and writers while representing their interests to government, the rest of the industry, and the public. It currently boast around 260 members and 4,000 music catalogues. “I am pleased to welcome the Music Publishers Association to the Operation Creative initiative,” says PIPCU head Detective Chief Inspector Peter Ratcliffe. “The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit is committed to reducing the impact of intellectual property crime on the UK’s creative industries and in Creative we have a wonderful tool to disrupt the infringers’ revenue streams and hit them where it hurts them the most.” While providing no specific details, Ratcliffe says that since Operation Creative is “entering a new phase”, new supporters will help strengthen its ranks.

Internet provider Cox Communications maintains that it's not responsible for copyright infringements carried out by its subscribers. The company has announced that it will appeal the $25 million damages verdict in its case against music publisher BMG. Last December a Virginia federal jury ruled that Internet provider Cox Communications was responsible for the copyright infringements of its subscribers. The ISP was found guilty of willful contributory copyright infringement and must pay music publisher BMG Rights Management $25 million in damages. The verdict was a massive victory for the music company and a disaster for Cox, but the case is not closed yet. After a failed motion for judgment as a matter of law earlier this month, the ISP has now informed the court that it will take the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Cox denies any wrongdoing and hopes to get a judgment in its favor at the appeals court. Cox’s appeal notice Considering the gravity of the case, Cox’s move is not surprising. The liability verdict has come as a shock to the Internet provider industry, as it suggests that providers have to actively disconnect repeat infringers. At the moment, many ISPs don’t have a solid policy in place where repeat copyright infringers lose their subscription. In fact, the law doesn’t prescribe when and based on what evidence an ISP has to terminate an account. Up until now, several Internet providers argued that only a court could determine if a subscriber is a repeat infringer, but with the Cox verdict this has now become uncertain. After the appeal, which is expected to take several months at least, both Cox and BMG still have the option to take the case to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, anti-piracy outfit Rightscorp is using the current verdict to threaten other ISPs to forward their notices. Thus far, however, this doesn’t appear to have had much effect.

Rules for Requests - Currently, you can make maximum of two requests - Search existing requests and already uploaded torrents before you make a new request. Duplicate requests will be deleted. - Do NOT request for things that are not released yet. For example, DvDs before the official release date. Make sure the item you are requesting exists. Also avoid requesting blockbusters, they are uploaded anyway. - Do Not request reseeds. Use the “Request Reseed Button” - Do NOT use comments section, Forums or Shoutbox for requests. Guidelines for filling new request - Title: Name of your request goes here. For Example: Paa (2009) 1080p DTS x264. - Category: Select appropriate category. For example, 1080p BluRay fits above example. - Image: Link to the poster - Description: IMDB link should be enough. Violating the above rules and guidelines will result in warning and possible ban if repeated.

TRACKER NAME: Chippu.net TRACKER GENRE: HD SIGNUP LINK: http://f.chippu.net/index.php?register/ CLOSING TIME: N/A ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Focusing mainly on Japanese and Korean movies / dramas, going to open for broader support in the future. This is a new modern tracker, with registrations open for another week. Every Torrent has English subtitles and they have their own sub crew. Great for those who crave Asian cinema.

In the early days of P2P, saving money on media was a key motivator for people to pirate online. But now, with the market beginning to mature, it is the timely availability of content in convenient formats that has the ability to tackle the piracy issue. For one iconic torrent site, availability of legitimate content was to prove fatal. When peer-to-peer file-sharing networks started to gain traction more than a decade and a half ago, it soon became clear that if entertainment industries were to compete, they’d need to step up their game. In the early 2000s, for example, users of Sharman Networks’ Kazaa software already had wide and free access to music and video titles. The introduction of BitTorrent shortly after only turned up the pressure. Fifteen years down the line it’s now clearer than ever. The true enemy of illicit file-sharing is broad and convenient access to all content at a fair price. In the meantime, however, platforms such as torrent sites continue to pick up the slack. More than a decade ago, they were leading the charge. Founded in 2003/4, torrent site UKNova took a somewhat unusual approach to its offering. Rather than the free-for-all witnessed on most platforms, UKNova aimed to responsibly service UK-based consumers and those overseas with select content that couldn’t easily be obtained by other means. Initially, the site catered to a few ex-pats who were desperate for their fix of long-running TV soap, Eastenders. It had been made available in the States by BBC America, but in 2003 the iconic show was dropped. “After initially sending VHS tapes across the Atlantic, a daring foray into the unknown world of trackers and torrents was made by brave visionaries and uknova.com was born,” a site operator told TorrentFreak. “UKNova rapidly became known as the ‘go-to’ place for UK television and for a while was probably the leading private tracker catering to ex-pats and Anglophiles around the world.” Most private torrent sites have strict rules, but UKNova went a step further than most by only allowing UK-produced TV content that was not available on DVD or premium channels. But despite the restrictions, UKNova was a success. “Membership rapidly grew and was voluntarily limited to between 30,000 and 40,000 members. Forum activity could become so heavy that server problems arose, leading to an iconic ‘Mind The Gap‘ message.” But UKNova was much more than just a torrent site. Like many niche trackers, UKNova had a thriving close-knit community centered around the theme and culture of UK TV. With assistance from the site’s radio station, those friendships thrived beyond the digital space. “Events and activities grew from the forums: picnics and meet-ups, annual awards ceremonies with live radio, mugs and t-shirts, fantasy football leagues, and above all solidarity for members who were in need, ill or deceased,” the operator explains. “There were at least four marriages resulting from friendships struck up on UKNova’s forums and IRC chat.” Due to the nature of UK TV (free to view, for those who pay the standard license fee), UKNova offered a lot of BBC content. Back in the early days BBC iPlayer simply did not exist so once shows disappeared off air, that was that until the corporation decided to bring them back. UKNova not only filled that gap, but even received a request to help the BBC complete its archives. “During this time relations with the BBC were cordial. In one case UKNova was even asked if they could find a missing recording of documentary series Horizon,” a site representative explains. But by 2012, the atmosphere had begun to shift. “UKNova is being forced to change,” an operator told TF at the time. “We have been issued with a ‘cease and desist’ order by FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft.” FACT was clear in its demands. All copyrighted content needed to come down, no matter where that content had come from and despite the fact that UKNova had never had a complaint from any TV station since its inception. The site didn’t believe it could be successfully prosecuted but had no way of defending itself. “UKNova has never had any source of revenue other than donations to help pay for the servers and bandwidth. In latter years the site survived uniquely on private donations from Staff,” TF was told. Within weeks UKNova shut down, but the dream wasn’t quite over yet. “In 2013 a group of independent users decided to re-ignite the flame with a new site which was kept as low profile as possible. This site kept the ethos of the original UKNova, with the same rules concerning commercially available material,” a site veteran explains. This, it appears, was to be the site’s ultimate undoing. The environment in 2013 was massively different to that of 2003. Legitimate services were appearing left and right, meaning that the content pool available to UKNova users under the site’s own stringent rules was diminishing every day. UKNova’s decision to maintain its position as “the ethical torrent site” was cutting off its own oxygen supply and over the next three years the site began to die. “In 2016 it became clear that the advent of the BBC Store and Amazon Video, linked to the quasi-immediate availability of shows from other channels on DVD, meant that allowable content was shrinking daily,” a site operator explains. With the main reason for people visiting the site diminishing all the time, members had less and less to talk about. The continued rise of external and mainstream social media only exacerbated the situation. “The discussion forums were grinding to a halt and membership was gradually shrinking. Rather than flogging a dead horse it seemed appropriate to turn out the lights, lock the door and gracefully retire.” On Saturday August 7, UKNova’s trackers were taken offline. A week later the site was shuttered completely. UKNova was dead, this time for real. “It’s been a good long run, so much good has been done, and so much fun has been had, by so many people – a unique experience. But all good things..,” the site said in a closing statement. While FACT’s intervention was certainly an unwelcome one, it seems fairly clear that its own strict rules and the availability of legitimate content was what ultimately led to UKNova’s demise. Sadly, however, UKNova’s initial goals of serving the ex-pat community are still proving a problem today. Only last week, FACT and the UK’s Police Intellectual Property Unit shut down an IPTV service directly aimed at British citizens living abroad. PIPCU said that the platform had many thousands of customers, showing that a potentially lucrative market still exists if only someone, somewhere, would service it. Someone will, but it won’t be UKNova.

Show/Hide New Feature: Bumped Torrents Cinemageddon just added a new feature to the site: Bumped Torrents. If someone reseeds a torrent that has gone unseeded for over a year it will be bumped to the top of the torrent list and receive a 1% seed/leech bonus for every month the torrent has gone unseeded. This bonus will last for 48 hrs. So get to it, dig up your old CG downloads from your archives and blow new life into old torrents. It's worth it now!

Dear users, We are currently doing some minor work on the hosting server. Users should not be affected by this, but it is possible that you'll notice some very minor downtime.

Mass Logout Incoming I'm writing some new code for managing sessions. You're all going to be logged out when the code launches a few hours from now, so don't freak out. Edit: This is done. Welcome back.

At the same time want easy access for others to do anything? CMCT want to join this glorious team do? CMCT for all members of the working group is now recruiting the following long-term staff, if you are interested in participating, please select from the following groups for their own group to join: 1, pressed Group: must learn to adjust bilingual subtitles, but there is a certain basis, there is no basis to suppress Society must start from the tuning bilingual subtitles; 2, bilingual groups: bilingual subtitles tuned to have a certain foundation in English, English least four or more, and do not include those who do not know English; 3, recording group: record domestic and Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan HD channels and compressed video; 4, special effects group: Major countries with subtitling and audio dictation; 5, DIY group: MiniBD and the original disk DIY production. Requirements: 1, after entering the working group, Do not quit; 2, to ensure long-term access, daily online time less than two hours, arrange for the group to complete the task on time; 3, not less than upload bandwidth requirements 500K, and i7 machine recommended configuration above, and 8G RAM recommended above. Working Group for the excellent staff can provide server tablet (subtitles group ignored this requirement); 4, CMCT have a good impression, to have team spirit, soy sauce person, curiosity, please do not disturb! You Are the One! Application Process: 1, group number: 324 446 465 into the group verify "Working Group Calls"; 2, after the report by the group into the group managed to arrange teaching and training within the group; 3, after your studies are required to attend assessment, assessment by leaving the group, did not pass cleaning, time period of one month. Special note: all we are engaged in unpaid volunteer work, hobbies all alone. Of course, there will be added after the medal, ocean, magic and welfare within the Working Group, CMCT invite love and are willing to pay for high-definition video to share the children's shoes to join our team and look forward to!

TRACKER NAME: FullMixMusic.org TRACKER GENRE: Music SIGNUP LINK: http://fullmixmusic.org/signup.php CLOSING TIME: Soon ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Great ratioless music tracker with over 17.000 torrents.

Greetings to all at IH. Would like to contribute some invites and make other posts in many sections; anyway, would like to be active as possible here.