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Hey, welcome to invitehawk, enjoy your stay here, feel free to ask.

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Hey, welcome to invitehawk, enjoy your stay here, feel free to ask.

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Elsevier and other academic publishers see 'pirate' site Sci-Hub as a major threat to science and their own multi-billion-dollar industry. Through a lawsuit in India, the companies hope to have the site blocked but Sci-Hub is actively fighting this request in court. According to the site's founder, the publishers are the real threat to the progress of science. Sci-HubBy offering free access to millions of ‘paywalled’ research papers, Sci-Hub is often described as “The Pirate Bay of Science”. The site is used by researchers from all over the world, to access papers they otherwise have a hard time accessing. For some, the site is essential to do their work. The major academic publishers such as Elsevier, Wiley, and American Chemical Society are not happy with the rogue research library. These companies have made billions of dollars by selling access to research and see Sci-Hub as a direct threat to their business model. This has resulted in several lawsuits including two that were won by publishers through default judgments in U.S. courts. Despite these rulings, Sci-Hub and its founder Alexandra Elbakyan are not backing down. On the contrary, the site has become a household name in many academic institutions and most users care very little about the copyright angle. They see more value in open access to research. The Indian Blocking Lawsuit Sci-Hub’s latest legal battle, which takes place in India, is the first one where the site will actively put up a defense. Soon after the legal action was announced last year lawyers came in to offer their help, while local researchers pledged their support. The broader academic community is watching the case closely as well. Nature, which itself is one of the most prestigious scientific publications, highlighted the ongoing legal battle in an article yesterday, including some comments the publishers behind the Indian lawsuit. “Pirate sites like Sci-Hub threaten the integrity of the scientific record, and the safety of university and personal data,” the publishers told Nature, adding that the site uses stolen credentials and compromises the security of libraries and higher education institutions. Nature also heard Sci-Hub’s founder who characterized the publishers’ comments as “empty accusations”. However, Elbakyan said more than that but not all her comments made it into the article. ‘Publishers Are The Real Threat’ In fact, the full response, posted by Elbakyan on Twitter, shows that she sees the publishers are the real threat to science. “Academic publishers threaten the progress of science: open communication is fundamental property of science and it makes scientific progress possible. Paywalled access prevents this and is a great threat to science.” “The great threat is also when the whole scientific knowledge became the private property of some corporation such as Elsevier, that has full control of it. That is a threat, and not Sci-Hub,” Elbakyan adds. Sci-Hub’s founder also rejects the notion that the site threatens the integrity of the scientific record. It simply republishes the same articles that are normally behind a paywall and doesn’t alter anything. Dangrously Useful? Similarly, the accusation that Sci-Hub threatens the safety of university and personal data is refuted at well. Those are a bunch of empty words. It sounds dangerous but it’s not backed up by any evidence, Elbakyan notes. The people who use Sci-Hub do so because they have no other affordable option to access the academic research they need for their own work. “Nobody is complaining about ‘compromised security’ except academic publishers. It is touching to see, how caring they are about others. Except, that they do not care at all about millions of people who cannot access science because they do not have money.” “Do they have any actual case when Sci-Hub somehow compromised the security of any library or a person? Any person that complained about credentials that were ‘stolen’ from them? Or is it again, nothing more but empty accusations.” Sci-Hub’s founder gets a lot of support from researchers from all over the world and her recent tweet is no exception to this. There are dozens of academics openly supporting her on Twitter. sci-hub support ‘Fair Dealing’ Ultimately, however, the ‘legality’ of Sci-Hub will be decided in court. While it’s clear that Sci-Hub takes copyrighted content without permission, the defense argues that this is for the greater good, so it’s ‘fair dealing’. Sci-Hub’s lawyers Shrutanjaya Bhardwaj and Sriya Sridhar are confident that they can make this case. They tell Nature that, if Sci-Hub wins, this could have a global ripple effect, which may change how foreign courts see the site. Of course, the opposite is also true. Thus far Sci-Hub has been blocked in several countries already, so a ‘fair dealing’ victory would be an outlier. Elbakyan hopes that Sci-Hub will eventually be recognized as a legal site. In that sense, not much has changed since we first interviewed here six years ago. Since then the legal pressure has increased, but so have the public support and users of the site.

Malaysia's House of Representatives has passed amendments to copyright law that will boost the country's deterrent against those who facilitate access to pirate content via illegal streaming. The amendments, which cover both hardware and software, could see offenders imprisoned for up to 20 years. Streaming KeyLaws that forbid the illegal uploading and downloading of copyrighted content are common around the world but the rise of streaming has sometimes exposed gaps in legislation. Piracy-equipped Kodi devices, illegal streaming apps, and similar tools have led legal specialists to attempt to apply laws that didn’t envision the technology. In Malaysia, for example, it took a decision by the High Court last May to determine that the sale and distribution of streaming devices configured for piracy purposes does indeed constitute infringement under the Copyright Act. But Malaysia was far from done. After previously informing the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that the economic harm being caused to broadcasters and rightsholders in the country was a “serious problem”, Malaysia said it had amendments on the table to more directly tackle the illegal uploading, provision, and sharing of access to copyright works. House of Representatives Passes Copyright Amendment Bill This week Malaysia’s Dewan Rakyat (House of Representatives) passed the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2021 which, among other things, will more directly address the challenges of illegal streaming. “Act 332 is amended to ensure copyright laws implemented will provide more efficient and effective protection in line with current demands and to fulfill the needs of the business community and stakeholders,” said Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk Seri Alexander Nanta Linggi. The amendments are focused on those involved in the provision or facilitation of illegal streams. The term “streaming technology” is repeatedly referenced and for the purposes of the act this includes computer programs (apps and other software tools), devices (streaming hardware of all kinds) that, in whole or in part, are used to infringe copyright in a protected work. How the amendments will be used in practice remains to be seen but the scope appears to be intentionally broad and could result in significant punishments for those found to be in breach of the law. Punishments for Illegal Streaming Facilitators The first section of the amendment deals with those who “commit or facilitate infringement” of copyright by manufacturing a streaming technology for sale or hire, importing a streaming technology, selling or letting for hire (including offering, exposing or advertising for sale or hire), and/or possessing or distributing a streaming technology in the course of a business. It expands to include distributing or offering to the public an infringing streaming technology or service other than in the course of a business, to such an extent “as to affect prejudicially the owner of the copyright.” Anyone who contravenes these amendments will be guilty of an offense and upon conviction shall be liable to a fine of not less than 10 thousand ringgit (US$2,377) but not more than two hundred thousand ringgit (US$47,545). In addition to the possibility of fines, there are also custodial sentences that could reach a staggering 20 years imprisonment in the most serious of cases. Those hoping to use a corporate structure as a shield are also put on notice. When any offenses are committed by a corporate body or by a person who is a partner in a firm, everyone from directors to managers will be deemed guilty of the offense and may be charged severally or jointly, unless they can show they had no knowledge and conducted due diligence to prevent the offense.

Fakku is one of the few companies that succesfully transformed a 'pirate' operation into a legitimate business. After this transformation, the 'hentai' publisher started to crack down on pirate sites. With a recent takedown request, it went too far, flagging TorrentFreak for copyright infringement. bad fakkuWhen Fakku launched 15 years ago, it was an aggregator for unlicensed scanlations of adult manga, also known as hentai. The site’s founder, Jacob Grady, studied computer science in Massachusetts at the time and used student loans to pay the server bills of a site that was essentially a pirate operation. Fakku never sought trouble with rightsholders though. It simply wanted to expand the manga niche to a broader audience by aggregating translations. That worked well as the platform kept growing. As the years passed things got more serious and Fakku slowly but steadily signed deals with rightsholders. By the end of 2015, it had completed the transformation from a ‘pirate site’ into a licensed publisher, which is a laudable achievement. This new role in the manga ecosystem also meant that Fakku became interested in protecting its rights. After all, you don’t want other people to profit from ‘your’ content. This meant that the publisher started to send takedown notices to pirate sites, and more. Over the past few months, Fakku has repeatedly gone to court trying to unmask the operators of sites such as Hentai.cafe and HentaiNexus. These two domains have since disappeared. At the same time, the publisher is sending millions of takedown notices to various online platforms. Google alone has received over 45 million takedown requests from the company since early this year. Unfortunately, not all of these are correct. A few days ago the company sent a DMCA notice to Google asking it to remove 1,110 URLs from its search results. Most of these point to pirated content, but TorrentFreak was listed among these sites as well. fakku DMCA TF In fact, Fakku suggests that our news article covering the legal action against Hentai.cafe is somehow copyright infringing. We’re not aware of any wrongdoing, of course, and the “commutative” [sic] episode list provided in the takedown notice doesn’t ring any bells either. Mistakes can happen, of course, and luckily Google stepped in and decided to keep the article in its search engine. We don’t want to make a big deal out of it really, but it would be great if Fakku could be a bit sharper going forward. TorrentFreak asked Fakku for a comment on our findings but the company didn’t immediately reply. Our news article isn’t the only unusual URL in the takedown notice though. We also spotted a blog post from Doujins.com, which reports on a row between Fakku and Hentai Heaven from two years ago, which appears to have been sorted out later.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'The Batman' tops the chart, followed by ‘X'. 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' completes the top three. the batmanThe data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into the piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources. This week we have two new entries on the list. “The Batman” is the most downloaded title. The most torrented movies for the week ending on April 18 are: Movie Rank Rank Last Week Movie Name IMDb Rating / Trailer Most downloaded movies via torrent sites 1 (8) The Batman 8.4 / trailer 2 (…) X 6.9 / trailer 3 (1) Spider-Man: No Way Home 8.6 / trailer 4 (3) Moonfall 5.2 / trailer 5 (2) The Outfit 7.2 / trailer 6 (6) All The Old Knives 6.1 / trailer 7 (…) Infinite Storm 5.3 / trailer 8 (4) The Contractor 5.7 / trailer 9 (5) Death on the Nile 6.5 / trailer 10 (7) Jackass Forever

In 2017, a special police force arrested the alleged mastermind behind french torrent site T411. The Ukrainian man, who lives in Sweden, describes himself differently as a freelance systems operator. Today "Alex" is sharing his account of what happened, including the dramatic arrest, a family tragedy, and his encounters with pirating police officers. “I woke up to the sounds of a door breaking down. I got out of bed and saw screaming people running towards me upstairs. I’ve tried to close the door to the bedroom. My wife woke up and started screaming loudly in panic…” “My first thought was that these people were robbers, or maybe worse…” t411During the summer of 2017, the French authorities booked a massive success with the shutdown of T411, a popular semi-private torrent tracker with over five million registered members. Despite France’s three-strikes law, better known as Hadopi, the site managed to gain a spot among the 50 most-visited sites in the country. That reign ended abruptly, which came as a shock to many regular users. There were other surprises as well. When the news of the shutdown became public it turned out that T411 wasn’t strictly managed by a French team. In fact, two of the alleged “brains” behind the operation were Ukrainians, while the site itself was hosted on Swedish servers. Following the initial arrests, the authorities haven’t released any additional information. And now, nearly five years later, it turns out that one of the key Ukrainian suspects is still in limbo, unsure whether he will have his day in court. Today, the former systems operator of T411 is willing to share his story with us. This is done on condition of anonymity, to avoid issues with future employers. We agreed to this as we think it’s important to share his story with a broader public, and will refer to him as “Alex” instead. — It’s important to realize that this is a one-sided account and TF was not able to independently verify all the statements. That said, this story isn’t as much about details as it is about feelings, as will soon become apparent. This is not an attempt to create sympathy for Alex or judge who’s right or wrong. That’s up to the courts. The main goal is to show the personal stories behind a 2017 headline most people have long forgotten. — A Succesful Startup Alex’s involvement with T411 starts in 2009. At the time he was still living in Ukraine, where he worked as the technical chief of a system administration department at a large outsourcing company. The Ukrainian company worked for clients worldwide and T411 came in as a regular new project. The owner of T411 wanted to optimize the site and servers because the site was growing rapidly growing at the time. After inspecting the servers, Alex decided to take the lead on the project, engaging in direct communications with the owner. From a technical perspective, Alex saw the torrent site as a challenge that required some non-standard solutions. However, he never really discussed anything non-technical with the owner and couldn’t understand much of the front end, as it was all in French. In 2010, Alex left the outsourcing company and moved to Sweden, hoping to find new opportunities in Europe. When he notified T411 about this decision the torrent site asked him to continue his work on a freelance basis. Without any objections from his former employer, that’s exactly what he did. In the years that followed the partnership continued. Alex took the lead making the backend run smoothly and even hired additional freelancers when needed. It felt like being part of a successful startup. “It worked like a small successful startup. I never hid my involvement in this project and didn’t treat it as if I was doing something illegal. I was not involved in managing the content of the site, that part was done by French moderators,” Alex tells us. “I was proud of this project because I’ve implemented its complex technical setup via non-standard edge technologies. I still have an old copy of my CV from 2013, which I used to find a job in Sweden, and t411 was in the top list of projects I’ve described there.” Alex continued working on other projects aside from T411, but the former took up most of his time. The fact that copyright holders were complaining about the torrent tracker didn’t come as a surprise though. In fact, Alex regularly had to remove torrent files from the database in response to takedown notices. The site’s owner said that it was too time-consuming for moderators to remove all reported torrents through the admin panel so Alex had to do it directly from the database. At some point that became too much hassle as well, so a special tool was created to automate things. “Incoming DMCA emails were automatically recognized and all torrents in the list were removed from the site,” Alex tells us. “This system made me believe that I didn’t do something illegal and that the site respects copyright.” Rightsholders and law enforcement officials clearly saw things differently, as would soon become apparent to Alex as well. The Terrorist Arrest On a summer’s morning in 2017, roughly around 7am, a handful of police cars rolled up to a quiet neighborhood in a Swedish town. A special police force, from a department that also handles terrorist threats, was about enter a house where a family with an 8-month-old baby was still fast asleep. “June 27, 2017, was the worst day of my whole life,” Alex says. “I woke up to the sounds of a door breaking down. I got out of bed and saw screaming people running towards me upstairs. I’ve tried to close the door to the bedroom. My wife woke up and started screaming loudly in panic…” “My first thought was that these people were robbers, or maybe worse…” After the initial panic, Alex was taken to a police car where he was told that his arrest was related to T411. And to his surprise, the officers also arrested his wife. Meanwhile, the house was searched for evidence of potential crimes. The arrested couple were taken into custody where they were interrogated in detail. While Alex was clearly involved with the site, his wife wasn’t. The problem was that Alex had used her PayPal account for his freelance work as Ukrainian accounts couldn’t receive incoming payments at the time. This tragic mistake resulted in a family drama that was nothing short of a nightmare for the young family. The Baby While Alex and his wife were in custody a neighbor took their 8-month-old son. After a few hours, the police came by to pick up the baby with someone from social care. They informed the neighbor that the boy would probably not see his parents again for a long time. The baby was then placed in a temporary social care facility. Luckily, however, the PayPal issue was sorted out and Alex’s wife was released from custody and reunited with the baby two days later. Looking back, emotions still run high. “After my wife took him back, he stopped accepting breastfeeding because of the stress. This is how police actions interrupted the natural process between the mother and her son. Sorry for the emotions here, but I just can’t accept this,” Alex tells us. As it turns out, law enforcement had already arranged a foster family for the baby in advance, assuming that the couple would remain locked up for a long time. “What frustrates me and my wife the most is that Swedish police prepared the arrest for more than one month and they didn’t even check if we have any relatives in Ukraine who can take care of our son,” Alex says. “If the regular police would have knocked on my door instead, I would have cooperated. That would be the same result for them, but without a life trauma for our whole family.” French Prison The developer eventually spent about two weeks in Swedish custody where he was allowed to see his family. This was hard and emotional but things were about to take a turn for the worse – Sweden had agreed to extradite Alex to France. The transfer to France happened July 14, which is a national holiday. This means that the process was slow. Eventually in Paris, he was put in a dirty, cold jail room to spend a night in custody with some rather unpleasant company. During his transfer, Alex also spoke to a few French police officers who were all too familiar with the torrent site. “I had some short conversations with the police officers who transferred me. They didn’t speak much English but enough to tell me that they used t411. They said that it was a nice site before the shutdown and that they had to switch to another site.” “They also told me how they got Hadopi claims at home, but simply ignored them. That was fun to hear,” Alex adds. Time in prison was tough but Alex was happy that there were some Russian-speaking people who he could talk with. While these were seasoned criminals, it still felt good. “The prisoners in my department were mainly connected to drugs crimes, robberies, and a few persons were killers. Luckily most of them were not aggressive,” Alex says. “I shared my cell with a big drugs dealer, who was convicted to seven years in prison and was waiting for an appeal. He was a really kind and well-organized person, helped me with a lot of things, explained the prison rules, and helped me with filling out various papers in French.” Unfortunately, there was no option to meet with his family; no phone calls either. They were able to communicate through letters but these could take a long time to arrive because they first had to be analyzed. In addition to missing his family, Alex also missed life and coding. The newspapers and TV were both in French so he felt disconnected. Meanwhile, he could almost feel his coding skills degrade. Eventually, Alex’s first official hearing took place after five months and roughly a week later he was released, pending further investigation. Life in Limbo After his return to Sweden, Alex focused on his family and work, hoping to put everything that happened behind him. This was easier said than done. On paper the French investigation is still open, which means that things can suddenly take a turn for the worse, at any time. After nearly five years, there’s still a lot of frozen property. There are claims on the house, car, and a bank account, which are regularly prolonged. Alex’s wife eventually managed to get her part unclaimed, but the family still feels stuck. “The main effect for our family is that we can’t sell our house to move to another one. We are prisoners in this house and don’t feel complete freedom as regular citizens.” Ideally, the family would like to buy a new home in a more rural area. They both work from home and would like to enjoy nature more. Also, the old house never felt safe again after the traumatic arrest. Moving to a new place has also become more of a priority now that the family has grown. “We got a second kid in 2019 and more recently we took in our parents from Ukraine. They escaped from war and there are no guarantees they will be able to go back in the upcoming years because many of the houses there are destroyed.” As far as we know, no person has yet been convicted in relation to the T411 investigation. The original owner of the site used a fake name but was presumably from Canada. The authorities tracked him down but it’s unclear whether he was arrested or even located. Alex has no idea how much longer he will have to wait before his case is finalized but in light of current events in Ukraine, he’s no longer afraid. That’s also why he’s sharing his experiences today. “I’m ready for a fair trial where the arguments will be reasonable and all evidence is provided,” Alex concludes.

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My Favorite food is Daal Chawal ,Whats Yours....

My dream land is Pakistan and yours....

My Dream car is Honda City and yours

My Dream Job is Law, Whats Your?