Jump to content

Chewy_fox's Content - Page 18 - InviteHawk - The #1 Trusted Source for Free Tracker Invites

Buy, Sell, Trade, or Find Free Invites for top private trackers like redacted, blutopia, losslessclub, femdomcult, filelist, Chdbits, Uhdbits, empornium, iptorrents, hdbits, gazellegames, animebytes, privatehd, myspleen, torrentleech, morethantv, bibliotik, alpharatio, blady, passthepopcorn, brokenstones, pornbay, cgpeers, cinemageddon, broadcasthenet, learnbits, torrentseeds, beyondhd, cinemaz, u2.dmhy, Karagarga, PTerclub, Nyaa.si, Polishtracker, and many more.

Chewy_fox

Banned
  • Posts

    1,249
  • Joined

  • Feedback

    0%
  • Points

    1,250 [ Donate ]

Everything posted by Chewy_fox

  1. Broadband ISP TalkTalk has this week updated their list of blocked websites (i.e. those where they’ve been ordered by the UK high court to do so) to include the controversial Sci-Hub, which describes itself as being “the first pirate website in the world to provide [free] mass and public access to tens of millions of research papers.” At present ISPs can only be forced, via a court order, to block websites if they are found to heavily facilitate internet copyright infringement, which is supported via Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. Hundreds of piracy sites have been blocked as a result of this (including thousands of proxy sites and mirror domains for those), but most of those are focused on file sharing (P2P / Torrent), counterfeit goods or streaming. By comparison Sci-Hub is a site that tends to divide opinion over the issue of access to knowledge. On the one hand the site enjoys support from those who believe that scientific research, which helps to further knowledge and education, should not be locked away behind paywalls (i.e. restricted access). But on the other hand, there are those who view Sci-Hub as little more than “cybercriminals” that cause “real harm to individual libraries” and universities (here). Nevertheless, given the latest update to TalkTalk’s Block List, it appears as if two academic publishers – Elsevier and Springer Nature – have now succeeded in getting the High Court to extend their blocking injunctions to include Sci-Hub (credits to TorrentFreak for spotting). At the time of writing the website still appears to be accessible on other ISPs and it’s not mentioned on Virgin Media’s own block list, but this may well change. Sadly, the details of this case have not yet been made public. Meanwhile network-level ISP blocking like this remains wafer thin because the site isn’t removed at its sources (beyond an ISPs reach), which means that anybody who actively goes looking for such content will easily be able to find a myriad of ways around such restrictions (e.g VPN, Proxy Servers etc.).
  2. Somehow a lawsuit involving The Pirate Bay’s one-time spokesperson Peter Sunde is still working its way through the motions. Last week, the Court Of Appeal in Finland ruled that Sunde had been responsible for the copyright infringement enabled by the infamous piracy site while he was involved in running it between 2005 and 2009. There have been a plethora of lawsuits against The Pirate Bay over the years, of course, most of which the piracy site has failed to respond to, with its current operators remaining anonymous. However, in the early days everyone knew that Sunde and his TPB co-founders Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm were running the file-sharing operation, meaning they got caught up in some of the legal action in a personal capacity, most notably the criminal case in Sweden that resulted in some jail time for all three men. By the time the record industry sued Sunde et al in Finland in 2012, the founders had already stopped working for the piracy site. But Sunde failed to respond to that lawsuit and was initially ordered to pay 350,000 euros in damages to the majors. However he appealed, beginning a back and forth about when he’d been actively involved in TPB, whether the Finnish courts had jurisdiction, what damages if anything he should pay, what the sanction should be for future involvement in piracy activity, and what legal costs on the record industry’s side he should be obliged to cover. The case eventually reached Finland’s Court Of Appeal, which last week confirmed that Sunde had been liable for copyright infringement while involved in running the site, but that that had stopped on 3 Aug 2009. He won’t have to pay any damages, but will face a 35,000 euro fine if involved in any future infringement, and he was ordered to pay 7700 euros towards the majors’ legal costs. The court said in a statement: “The Court Of Appeal found it proven that the defendant had acted as an administrator of The Pirate Bay – a peer-to-peer file sharing service – from 1 Jul 2005 until 3 Aug 2009 and had in the said capacity played a significant role in the unlawful distribution of recordings via the website. The defendant was found to have remained in a position that was essential for the operation of the site until 3 Aug 2009 and therefore responsible for the infringements of the claimant companies’ related rights committed via the service”. “However, the court did not find it proven that the defendant had been involved in the operation after 3 Aug 2009. The defendant was prohibited from repeating the infringements under threat of a fine of 35,000 euros. The Court Of Appeal found that it was competent to also hear the case in respect of the distribution of recordings via Swedish telecommunications operators on the grounds that the defendant was domiciled in Finland and the recordings had been available in Finland”. Welcoming the latest ruling, a spokesperson for the International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry said: “We welcome the decision from the court today. Copyright infringement harms the music ecosystem and prevents music creators from being fairly compensated. Right-holders have been forced to pursue The Pirate Bay across multiple jurisdictions in Europe for well over ten years. Despite a vast number of court decisions confirming the illegality of the service, The Pirate Bay remains available in many countries within the EU. A successful digital single market requires effective measures so that creators can enforce their rights across the EU”.
  3. Plex is an outstanding media organization and streaming tool. Typically, you install the Plex server on the home computer where your movies, TV, photos, and music are stored, and you can then stream this content to devices running a Plex app. Using Plex is perfectly legal. However, some of the things that people use Plex for make their specific use of Plex illegal - so read on to make sure you don't fall foul on potentially dodgy ground. Head to the Plex website to find out more and sign up What is Plex and how does it work? Read TechRadar's guide Our pick of today's best streaming services Legal uses of Plex Plex was designed to be used as a management and streaming tool for the media you own. Home videos, rips of Blu-rays, DVDs, and CDs, and other content that you’ve paid for are all fair game on Plex. There is also a wealth of free media online that’s copyright-free, which you can legally download and use with Plex. Plex has built-in live DVR functionality for watching and recording over-the-air broadcasts in your area using a digital and compatible tuner. In fact, Plex has increasingly moved away from its roots as a “personal Netflix” and now includes a bunch of streaming content for free. News, web shows, and podcasts are all free and legal to stream on Plex. Also, a Movies & TV streaming service that includes over 20,000 free on-demand movies is now built into Plex. There’s Live TV too, where you can stream over 100 channels for free. All these uses of Plex are legal. (Image credit: dennizn / Shutterstock.com) Illegal uses of Plex Of course, Plex is also popular software for people who pirate copyrighted material. Anyone can download a TV series to their Plex server, for example, and it’ll be categorized, tagged, and readily streamable to any device. While the use of Plex isn’t itself illegal, Plex has made the illegal viewing of copyrighted content easier. Also, Plex allows you to stream your content to as many people as you like. If someone illegally downloaded a movie and placed it on their Plex server, it would be available to all their Plex server users. This is arguably even more problematic, as you’re no longer simply consuming copyrighted content but actively facilitating the distribution of stolen content to others. Some people have taken this to the extremes, installing Plex on powerful servers and serving enormous libraries of content to hundreds of people at a time, often charging a monthly fee to do so. In this case, people are profiting from the distribution of stolen copyrighted material, something that is transparently illegal. Is Plex illegal? Plex is completely legal to download and use. But as with most software tools, it can be used for illegal purposes, too. To ensure that you always remain within the law, you should only stream media that you have the rights to.
  4. According to Reuters, Signal has stopped working in China all of a sudden, and users in the Asian country can only access the service via VPN (virtual private network) tools right now. The app itself is yet to announce anything on the reported block, and they may be trying to appreciate the situation before they rush to any statements. The Chinese state isn’t exactly happy to accept applications that hide user communications and don’t allow scrutiny or even support it in any way or form. Thus, this action against an app that is widely trusted by people who value their privacy doesn’t come as a surprise. Although no action against Signal has been officially confirmed by the Cyberspace Administration of China, it is considered certain that this is not a case of an outage caused by a technical problem or anything like that. After all, the app was already banned on all third-party Android stores in China, so the state’s stance against it has been clearly defined for a long time now. Signal has amassed a large number of new users after the snafu caused by WhatsApp’s new privacy terms that obliged users to accept that some of their private data may end up in the hands of its parent company, Facebook. When apps like Signal get bigger, regimes that generally don’t favor freedom of speech get more reasons to target them more aggressively. In China alone, Signal has 510,000 downloads on iOS, while it has a total of 100 million users across all platforms worldwide. The Chinese state would probably prefer that its citizens jump to Tencent’s WeChat, a local offering that obliges with the strict requirements of the national laws. WeChat is believed to be so tightly connected to the Communist Party of China that India included it in its Summer app bans. WeChat is already the biggest chat platform in China, but there’s admittedly a significant number of people who still slip through the cracks. If you are in China and you’re looking to use a VPN tool to access Signal or anything else on the internet, you may check this list with five great choices for you to pick. The legal, and by extension, the technical situation in China affects VPN usage, so you need to consider the risks involved in using one too. In general, as long as you avoid free VPN tools, you should be safe
  5. he UK music industry has secured a ban on UK's most prominent music streaming sites and related file-sharing services. The Mediasat editorial staff tells the details of this process. What happened On February 3, the High Court of England and Wales heard arguments from the British Phonogram Producers Association (BPI) and Phonographic Performance Ltd (PPL), representing record labels, over the harm that leading pirate sites are causing to the legitimate music streaming business. The court ruled that these sites violated the copyright of record labels and ordered Internet providers to block access to these resources. Who will be blocked According to the court decision , four currently operating streaming copying sites will be blocked , in particular - Flyto (on average about 58 million visits from the UK per month), 2Conv (about 25 million visits), Fly2mp3 and H2 Converter. Despite the fact that the court's decision does not mention any other websites, according to TorrentFreak , other similar resources will be subject to blocking. Collectively, these websites generated over a billion visits per year . What does BPI say? The British Phonogram Producers Association (BPI) said they had been preparing for a trial for two years and provided the court with more than 3,000 pages of evidence in support of their claim to injure pirates. In the months leading up to the judgment, BPI was in talks with six of the largest Internet service providers operating in the UK - BT, EE, PlusNet, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media. According to BPI, all ISPs have agreed not to oppose the lawsuit and comply with the court order . “The High Court has confirmed all our suspicions and the accusations we put forward, namely the fact that the operators and users of these file sharing and streaming copying sites, as well as their associated streaming copying applications, infringe copyright in all possible ways, and therefore - must be blocked in the UK, said BPI General Counsel Kiaron Whitehead... - These court decisions are very important both from a legal and practical point of view. They are not the silver bullet to end piracy once and for all, but they build on existing European legislation and represent a significant step forward in copyright protection in the UK. We are grateful to the High Court for such effective handling of this group litigation in online hearings. For its part, BPI plans to take further actions in accordance with these decisions. " Amanda Solloway , UK Minister of Intellectual Property, added: “This judgment is good news for artists and performers, and I am grateful to BPI for protecting our country's intellectual property laws. The creators of rip-streaming platforms are stealing hundreds of millions of pounds sterling that could have gone into further development of our music industry. " What's next? Against the backdrop of the court ruling, BPI called on the UK government to take additional measures to help reduce music piracy and add value to the legal music streaming market. The organization is asking for a “duty of care” to be introduced for online music platforms, which would allow these platforms to abuse safe haven provisions to underpay for the music they use. The association also expects the introduction of a rule that allows to claim damages from violators, which will prevent the work of illegal sites, and will also give copyright holders the opportunity to quickly and reliably send requests to providers to block resources. Last October, a UK parliamentary special committee launched an investigation into the impact of music piracy on the music streaming sector. To date, four meetings have already been held to discuss this problem. File sharing sites and streaming platforms cause an estimated £ 200 million in damage to the music industry ecosystem every year. Expert comment: Here is what Ignat Berezhnoy , director of the Ukrainian Music Industry Association, partner of the Clear Sky Initiative, says about this : Stream ripping is one of the most popular forms of piracy and together with other forms of piracy, according to the British Phonogram Producers Association (BPI), it takes more than £ 150 million a year from the British music sector. Therefore, of course, such a decision will have a positive impact on the development of the music industry and will serve as an example for other countries. Note that the practice of blocking sites with content that infringes copyright is widespread and gaining in scale in the UK and other countries, and is increasingly being used to combat piracy. For example, a few years ago, one of the world's largest music streaming sites, YouTube-mp3.org, ceased operations following lawsuits from record companies in the United States and the United Kingdom. This site was located in Germany and has 60 million monthly visitors from all over the world. As a result of the lawsuit, its operator agreed not to violate the rights of artists and record companies in the future. Another example is the activities of one of the world's most famous anti-piracy groups BREIN (Netherlands), which in 2019 closed 564 pirate sites and blocked 258 Pirate Bay proxies, one of the world's largest BitTorrent indexers and directory for search for .torrent files. In the first half of 2020 alone, they contributed to the filing of 250 lawsuits and more than 1,000 anti-piracy activities. BREIN secured an Amsterdam court order to block about 175 Pirate Bay proxies and mirrors. According to the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), music contributes € 81.9 billion annually to the EU economy and supports two million jobs. But this contribution is largely reduced due to the activities of pirate resources. The European Commission, in its 2020 Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List, noted that according to the study, the commercial value of digital music piracy in 2015 was $ 29 billion worldwide, and according to experts in 2022 it could already grow to 53-117 billion dollars. As for Ukraine, now it still remains on the Priority Watch List within the so-called "List 301" (Special 301 Report), as reported in the report of the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) on legal protection and protection of copyright, including because for many years it has not been able to solve the problem of piracy on the Internet. Repeatedly international associations for the protection of rights have drawn attention to the fact that without blocking sites, an effective fight against piracy is impossible. Ukraine is no exception, because the system "notice-and-takedown" (notification and deletion), provided for in the Law of Ukraine "On Copyright and Related Rights", has not been able to effectively earn. By the way, the Association Agreement with the EU stipulates that our country must introduce effective measures to combat piracy. If the existing system is ineffective, then the introduction of site blocking is a logical step to solve this problem. In fact, in the context of the entire article, the blocking of sites in itself is a natural result of the attention that is paid to the protection of intellectual property in Britain. Note that a parliamentary committee is considering the issue of music piracy, there is even a Minister for Intellectual Property and various associations representing the interests of copyright holders. When the state has an understanding of the importance of intellectual property issues, effective mechanisms for protecting the latter appear, this is a natural process. Therefore, the sooner such an understanding and the corresponding infrastructure appear in Ukraine at the state level, the better will be the protection of intellectual property and the more effective the fight against piracy in this area
  6. Is the image below relatable? According to the description, the service is a VPN desktop application and proxy browser extension that helps viewers mask their physical location, circumvent censorship, and restore access to blocked content. 2020 was an interesting year for the Media and Entertainment industry. As more people got confined within their homes to adhere to social distancing practices, this resulted in a significant increase in viewership of digital content. Online content piracy also surged during the pandemic — as viewers at home started using several options at their disposal (VPNs and DNS-based proxy services being the most popular) to circumvent territorial restrictions in order to access content not available in their regions. In an interview, BeIN Media Group CEO, Yousef Al-Obaidly, opens up about trying to keep a US$15 billion portfolio of sports rights from the clutches of a state-backed piracy operation[1]: “We really relish the competition, [but] the worst thing for our whole industry is to have illegal competition, and by illegal competition, I mean piracy. It’s not fair competition.” He goes on to say, “We should quadruple the investment into the anti-piracy infrastructure. We need to ensure that piracy is a top, top priority for the top management, and really engage the government on that issue, and of course, prosecute pirates.” There is a visible trend around the increasing use of VPNs and DNS proxies to spoof a user’s location in order to access geographically restricted content. According to the Global Web Index survey, the top motivation for VPN usage is “Accessing Better Entertainment Content” and figures suggest that 51% of all internet users are using VPNs for “Accessing Better Entertainment Content.”[2] Geopiracy Impacting Rights Holders Obligations and Impacting Revenue This widespread use of location spoofing undermines the territorial business model that rights holders implement. Consumers of premium over-the-top (OTT) and traditional pay TV use geopiracy to access the services of foreign broadcasters that offer the same or better content at cheaper prices and with earlier release schedules.[3] Broadcasters and studios consider the use of VPNs and similar services to evade geoblocking by online viewers a violation of copyright laws for their online video services, as these services do not hold the rights to make their content available in the viewer’s country. This results in media companies that license the content being unable to meet their contractual obligations with their rights holders.[4] Geobased piracy also results in revenue loss as illegitimate users access content outside of the territorial regions, resulting in less competition for future broadcast rights and ultimately lower revenues for rights holders. Viewing pirated content also displaces legitimate viewing. According to a survey conducted by the University of Amsterdam’s Institute for Information Law, when it came to watching “blockbuster movies,” the displacement rate was 0.46, meaning that for every 10 pirated views, 4 to 5 legitimate views were lost.[5] Blocking Illegitimate Geoviewership to Meet Contractual Obligations Measures to block users who are trying to access online video services from outside the legitimate territorial boundaries become critical to enable media companies that license the content to meet their contractual obligations with their rights holders. Viewers today have several options at their disposal to access content outside of their home territory; the most popular ones are IP Geolocation-based VPN and DNS proxy services. As many of these VPN and DNS proxy providers aggressively target major OTT platforms, a possible solution to block the illegitimate users circumventing georestrictions could be to screen the viewer’s IP address against a highly accurate and up-to-date database of known IP addresses used by the VPN and DNS proxy services. If the IP address is recognized as one belonging to a known data center that hosts the VPN connections, the viewer could be blocked, or another appropriate action could be taken. This database should be refreshed and updated frequently, and the OTT service site may want to collaborate with the vendor to ensure that the scale and scope of tackling the geopiracy requirements are met and the OTT services can maintain their contractual obligations with their rights holders. Enhanced Proxy Detection to Prevent Access for Unauthorized Viewers Akamai Enhanced Proxy Detection feature allows customers to determine whether a requesting IP address is associated with a VPN service or an anonymous proxy to help them take necessary actions on users who are trying to access content from illegitimate regions. Akamai has partnered with GeoGuard to incorporate its market-leading VPN/Smart DNS Proxy detection solution. GeoGuard’s premium VPN/Smart DNS Proxy detection is now fully integrated with Akamai to offer Enhanced Proxy Detection for online streaming services. GeoGuard’s solutions are based on the award-winning geolocation compliance and geoprotection technologies that are trusted by leading content owners and studios and owners across the globe. Akamai keeps checking the GeoGuard database at a specific frequency and, when an end-user makes a request for a specific piece of content, Akamai matches the requesting IP information to the GeoGuard database information. If a match is found, the request can be allowed, denied, or redirected at a category level based on the local database lookup. Enhanced Proxy Detection — Features and Other Details The Enhanced Proxy Detection workflow consists of an application that is responsible for retrieving IP data from GeoGuard, performing some safety checks (to avoid the risk of blocking legitimate traffic based on third-party data), and converting the information into an input format for distribution within the Akamai Intelligent Edge Platform. GeoGuard maintains a list of categories that are assigned to each illegitimate IP address. This list includes four Best Practices categories (Anonymous VPN, Public Proxy, Tor Exit Node, and Smart DNS Proxy) and two Advanced categories (Hosting Provider and VPN Data Center). This behavior leverages these categories to recognize that a request is coming from a proxy. When an incoming IP address is mapped to one of the identified categories three types of action can be taken: Allow: This lets the request through, and the action is logged; the logs can be audited later to determine if setting a different action may affect the traffic Deny: This blocks all matching requests Redirect: This sends the requests to an alternate URL. This sends the requests to an alternate URL; provided in the redirect URL field. Some of the Enhanced Proxy Detection features include: Allowlisting Specific IP Addresses There may be instances when an IP address is misidentified as illegitimate, or even cases in which a legitimate user is on a network that the customer wants to block. In these cases, allowlisting helps the customer enable content access for these specific IP addresses. Show My IP In order to detect whether a VPN provider is selectively tunneling traffic to specific viewer endpoints in an effort to evade detection, the Show My IP” feature would help provide visibility into a specific endpoint IP address in a customer domain that normally would be undetectable due to the use of a VPN. Header Enrichment Header Enrichment includes an additional header on requests that go forward to the origin that carries information about the category of the connecting IP address (e.g., anonymous proxy or not). Support for Hosting Provider Category This category specifically includes IP addresses associated with Cloud and CDN providers to enhance the ingest workflow. Support for IPv6 Datasets Enhanced Proxy Detection supports both IPv4 and now, IPv6 addresses for all the Enhanced Proxy Detection categories under Best Practices and Advanced categories. Combatting the Hijacked Residential IP Threat Many VPN providers have recently launched a new tactic to circumvent the detection of a VPN’s datacenter IPs. By enticing users to download a “free” VPN, millions of people worldwide have unwittingly had their residential IP addresses hijacked by the “free” VPN provider (through complicated terms of service agreement) and sold to the highest bidder — usually other VPNs that offer these addresses as a premium “undetectable” service. Enhanced Proxy Detection works to combat this hijacked residential IP issue. The integration of GeoGuard’s VPN/Smart DNS Proxy database with Akamai enables the broadcaster to do a secondary check on a viewer’s IP address when the stream starts and to detect the change from the hijacked residential IP that was used to access the stream to the VPN’s datacenter IP that was used to deliver the stream. Once the change is detected, the stream can be stopped. Summary and Way Forward Almost 30% of internet users have used a VPN or proxy server in the past month,[6] with the likely predominant purpose of circumventing content geofiltering restrictions. Akamai Enhanced Proxy Detection provides a simple and effective method for customers to just “turn on” geolocation restrictions and benefit from an enhanced level of content security to combat geolocation fraud and geopiracy. Enhanced Proxy Detection is a capability within our flagship Media Delivery solution Adaptive Media Delivery, so if you want to give Enhanced Proxy Detection a quick spin, use this link for a free trial. Managing contractual obligations with their rights holders should no longer be an issue!
  7. Ten years ago, the USTR's list of notorious online piracy markets was mostly made up of classic pirate outlets, such as torrent sites and cyberlockers. Over the years it has transformed into a mixed bag of targets including social media platforms, billion-dollar e-commerce companies, hosting services, and advertisers. The Pirate Bay is still there as well, of course. Every year, the US Trade Representative (USTR) publishes a list of ‘notorious markets’ that facilitate online piracy and other copyright crimes. The targeted sites and services engage in or promote piracy and counterfeiting. According to the copyright holder reports the list is based on, at least. For more than a decade we have covered the online part of the report. Traditionally, that includes prominent torrent sites, download portals, cyberlockers, and streaming services that operate without the permission of rightsholders. In recent years, however, the scope of the report has broadened. For example, we have seen domain registrars, hosting companies, advertisers, and social media platforms being added. These don’t have piracy as their core business, but they allegedly facilitate this activity. A few days ago, the USTR published its 2020 list of notorious markets. Again, we can clearly see the trend that the scope of the report is broadening. This was somewhat expected, as this year’s issue focus is ‘e-commerce platforms.’ “This year’s issue focus examines how the substantial growth of e-commerce platforms in recent years has facilitated similar substantial growth in the importation of counterfeit and pirated goods into the United States,” the USTR writes in its report. Amazon Traditionally, the USTR focuses on foreign sites and services. While that distinction was no longer made in the recent public consultation, the latest report remains targeted at companies that operate abroad. This doesn’t mean, however, that US-based companies are completely ignored. Amazon, for example, is tagged as a “notorious market” but this classification is limited to its foreign domains such as amazon.co.uk, amazon.de, and amazon.es. Copyright holders have filed a variety of complaints about Amazon. They say that the platform failed to properly vet sellers, is often abused to sell pirated and counterfeit goods, while repeat infringers can open multiple stores. These complaints are not new and Amazon has tried to address the problems over the years. This includes participation in an anti-counterfeit program from the US Governments’s IPR Center, but that’s still not enough according to rightsholders. More Ecommerce Amazon is not the only e-commerce giant to be branded as a notorious market. The USTR highlights several of the largest online storefronts across the world that reportedly face similar issues. MercadoLibre, for example, the largest e-commerce retailer in Latin America which is incorporated in the US. The report also mentions Shopee which is the leading player in Southeast Asia and Taiwan. The list of e-commerce targets is completed by Bukalapak.com, DHgate.com, Haraj.com.sa, Pinduoduo.com, Snapdeal.com, Taobao.com, Tokopedia.com and Weidian.com. All should improve their anti-piracy and counterfeiting policies. Hosting, Advertising and Social Media The USTR further calls out several sites and services that reportedly facilitate piracy. This includes hosting companies that reportedly ignore takedown requests, such as BlueAngelHost, FlokiNET, and Private Layer. Russia’s dominant social media platform VK.com falls in this category as well, together with the advertising company RevenueHits. The latter is accused of providing pirate sites with a steady income source. Interestingly, the report notes that many pirate site advertisers operate from Israel, which also applies to RevenueHits. “According to right holders, RevenueHits is one of the most popular advertising networks among pirate sites, in particular cyberlockers, with most of its advertisements targeting a European audience,” the report reads. The Pirate Bay and other ‘Usual’ Targets The Notorious Markets list wouldn’t be complete without more traditional pirate sites. On that front there is little fresh news this year, with the usual suspects such as The Pirate Bay, Fmovies, Rapidgator, and Sci-Hub all making an appearance. “As one of the first bittorrent indexing websites and one of the most vocal in openly promoting piracy, ThePirateBay reportedly remains the most frequently visited bittorrent index site in the world,” the USTR writes. After a short period of absence, the BitTorrent-powered streaming application Popcorn Time returned to the list as well. A full list of all the pirate sites and services mentioned is available below. Critique A common critique on the Notorious Markets List (NML) is that it’s mostly based on complaints from rightsholders. The USTR itself doesn’t verify these claims in detail, despite the strong implications the report may have. “The NML does not make findings of legal violations nor does it reflect the U.S. Government’s analysis of the general IP protection and enforcement climate in the countries connected with the listed markets,” the USTR clarifies. While most pirate sites are unlikely to respond to the USTR’s report, Amazon and other billion-dollar companies will likely rebut the claims in the coming weeks.
  8. Amagi, a global leader in SaaS for broadcast and streaming TV on the cloud, has announced that ABS-CBN Corporation, Philippines’ leading media and entertainment organization, has partnered with Amagi to consolidate its operations on cloud to expand its reach and gain greater flexibility. ABS-CBN is the Philippines’ leading media and entertainment organization that is primarily involved in content creation and production for television, online, and over-the-top platforms, cable, satellite, cinema, events, and online radio for domestic and international audiences. In early February, seven global channels from ABS-CBN Corporation went live with Amagi CLOUDPORT platform. With the cloud-based channel playout and live automation platform, Amagi CLOUDPORT, ABS-CBN now manages end-to-end workflow on the cloud, eliminating the need for expensive hardware/broadcast center operations, giving it the flexibility to run its global channels with live news from anywhere. The transition to Amagi cloud solutions enabled ABS-CBN to reduce its cost of operations by nearly 30 percent. “We were looking for a modern, cloud-based solution that could integrate seamlessly with our current live and non-live workflow requirements providing the same level or better comfort to our operations team as we did this transformation” said Erwin Malimban, Head of Broadcast Technology, ABS-CBN Corporation. “The Amagi team not only brought deep technical capabilities but also had extensive working knowledge with respect to the various processes and operational requirements. This enabled us to make a seamless transition to the cloud.” “ABS-CBN is one of the most forward-thinking media companies in the region and we are honored to work with them for their cloud transformation,” said Srinivasan KA, co-founder, Amagi. “Besides, a consolidated solution on the cloud helped ABS-CBN do away with a lot of existing legacy infrastructure, which translates into lower costs, fewer overheads, more efficient operations, and the ability to free up resources to focus on other priorities.” Overall, Amagi manages 400+ channels, with deliveries in more than 40 countries. The company operates a state-of-the-art cloud broadcast operations center that can support 1000+ live linear channels. Amagi clients include A+E Networks UK, beIN Sports, CuriosityStream, Discovery Networks, IMG, Tastemade, Tegna, VENN, Vice Media, and Warner Media, among others.
  9. CuriosityStream, the global factual entertainment streaming company, has announced its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31st 2020. “We had a strong 2020, ending the year with more than double our 2019 revenue with approximately 15 million subscribers,” said Clint Stinchcomb, President & CEO. “More recently, we raised approximately $100 million (€84.5m) in a follow-on offering completed in February of this year. We enter 2021 with a strong balance sheet, one of the largest libraries of factual content in the world and a world-class team of experienced media executives executing strongly against our plans. I couldn’t be prouder of what we accomplished in 2020, and I look forward to 2021.” Fourth Quarter 2020 Financial Results Revenue of $11.4 million, up from $6.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2019; Total paying subscribers of approximately 15 million, up 50 per cent year-over-year; Gross margin of 59 per cent compared to 64 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2019; Net loss was $(15.7) million compared to net loss of $(14.6) million in the fourth quarter of 2019; and EBITDA was $(15.5) million compared to EBITDA of $(14.8) million in the fourth quarter of 2019. Full Year 2020 Financial Results Revenue for the full year 2020 of $39.6 million, up from $18 million in 2019; Gross margin for the full year 2020 at 61 per cent, consistent with gross margin of 62 per cent for the full year 2019; Net loss for the full year 2020 was $(38.6) million compared to net loss of $(42.5) million for the full year 2019; EBITDA for the full year 2020 was $(38.6) million compared to EBITDA of $(44.1) million for the full year of 2019; and Ending cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and investments totaled $42.4 million as of December 31, 2020. Full Year 2020 Business Highlights Announced several brand-defining original series throughout 2020, including Pompeii: Disaster Street, History of Home, 4th and Forever, Muck City, Engineering the Future and Beyond The Spotlight executive produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and Appian Way; Strengthened leadership team with high performance veterans leading international and North American distribution, brand and media partnerships, finance and growth; Grew subscribers and maintained low single-digit churn; and Closed business combination with Software Acquisition Group, and began trading on the NASDAQ exchange under ticker symbol “CURI” on October 15th 2020, becoming the first streaming media company devoted to factual entertainment to go public. Financial Outlook For the full year 2021, CuriosityStream currently expects revenue of at least $71 million, or 80 per cent year-over-year growth
  10. As rights holders and streaming broadcasters step up their fight against geo-piracy, geolocation security solutions provider GeoComply Solutions has revealed that its OTT business has more than doubled in both customers and revenues in 2020. Indeed, the company says that as the pandemic continues to keep people away from theatres and sports arenas, many are turning to VPNs and DNS proxies to circumvent the territorial restrictions on content that studios, sports leagues and other content producers rely on for their revenue. It adds that this has driven increased demand for VPN and proxy detection solutions, as rights holders and OTT broadcasters look to protect their content from geo-piracy. Building on a customer base that includes Amazon Prime, BBC and ITV, GeoComply noted that it is now ramping up for further strong growth in 2021 particularly with national broadcasters. This includes the appointment of James Clark (pictured) as director of global sales. Clark brings to GeoComply over a decade’s experience in content security and was most recently director of the global security business development at Synamedia. Prior to that, he was VP of the content protection and anti-piracy team at Cartesian. “Content piracy via VPNs and proxies has very real consequences for the entire video streaming ecosystem, including significant job losses and slashed production budgets,” Clark, remarked. “With studios, sports leagues, broadcasters and other rights holders under serious financial pressure because of the pandemic, combating piracy has fast become a top priority. Fortunately, GeoComply’s solution to stop geolocation fraud and geo-piracy is affordable, easy to implement and provides an almost immediate return on investment.” This appointment follows the news that GeoComply has agreed its first institutional capital with investments from Blackstone Growth and Atairos, an independent investment firm backed by Comcast. The move, marking the first commitment of institutional capital to the company, aims to support GeoComply’s growth in its core markets and help accelerate expansion into new verticals. “We believe the company is poised for significant further expansion in the years ahead – particularly given their mission-critical role in delivering compliance software solutions to the fast-growing, global online gaming and sports betting industry,” said Blackstone Growth managing director Vishal Amin, commenting on the investment. “We are excited to work closely with [GeoComply] as it looks to further increase the company’s already strong leadership position into new markets and opportunities.”
  11. Kickass was a famous Torrenting website which provides a large directory of magnetic links for torrent files and P2P file sharing via the BitTorrent protocol. Millions of torrent users used it daily; however the government of US shut down the website in 2016 and arrested the site’s owner, Artem Vaulin. Many attempts were made to bring the website again via mirror links; however their proxy servers were also blocked by its staff. What Are Kickass Torrents? The Kickass was a famous Torrenting website which provides a large directory of magnetic links for torrent files and P2P file sharing via the BitTorrent protocol. It is famous because of free movies and software. What most people don’t know is that it’s a great way to play video games. On its final day, Kickass became known as the greatest way of digital content through the P2P protocol. However, there were major security troubles that led to malware and cyber attacks on users. The government of US took over the website on copyright issues in 2016 and ultimately went offline. It was a big blow to P2P sharing, in particular for those who like to download digital content for free. However as we have told, there are now kickass torrent proxy websites that work just like the original website. These proxy websites were created by former KAT employees and fans, so they are guaranteed to work fine. Through these sites, you can download music, movies, and computer software and so many games at free of cost. When And How Did The Kickasstorrents Start? The Internet train became a non-stop file sharing in 2008. Nearly a decade has passed since Napster broke the music industry by popularizing the P2P format, permitting users around the world to share MP3s freely, documents, videos, and many more files. To say that this was a dream of litigation would be a small dream. With the success of Napster, thousands of copycat networks inclusive of LimeWire and eMule have popped up hoping to score a pie. Their reputation was essentially guaranteed – suddenly consumers all over the world were able to access their favorite movies, TV shows and music for free. The BitTorrent protocol was another important aspect, which brought in 2001. This is because of what is called decentralized sharing. Something sites such as KickassTorrents would not have worked without. Instead of downloading files from a single host, torrent files send small requests to couple of customers all around the world, which reduces the load on individual servers. In 2008, KickassTorrents hit the market, and it had surpassed Pirate Bay as the most famous torrent directory on the Internet till the November 2014. However, these years were not without their problems. In 2013, Authorities in the United Kingdom and Belgium ordered KAT to be blocked, while the Motion Picture Association of America forced Google to remove the site from search results. Malaysia and Ireland then blocked the site from the National ISP in 2014, Portugal’s match in 2015. The death toll, however, fell in 2016. On July 20 of that year, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it had seized the KickassTorrents domain – now hosted by Kate CR in Croatia – and arrested the alleged owner of KAT. What Happened To The Kickass Torrents? The main site of KickassTorrents was shut down a few years ago. It was the result of a law enforcement operation led by the two US organizations, the Homeland Security Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service. In other words, you can’t access the original website of KickassTorrents. You will just get alarming warnings from the FBI. But, there is a copycat site that seems precisely the same as KickassTorrents and even has the same name. Therefore, must you use new KickassTorrents (KAT) website for your torrenting desires? We’ve our doubts. Although many people advise this site in their list of the best websites, we recommend in opposition to the use of it. That’s why there is something in this website which makes downloading much easier and straightforward. In the case you want to get the tracker from the new version of KickassTorrents, you will have to install extensions for your browser. Considering its name, this extension is somewhat similar of PDF converter. We did not install this, as we do not trust this extension that could lead to serious security and privacy issues. But, this does not mean that you can be afraid of anything. We would like to suggest you to be very careful about torrenting – in some cases downloading torrents can be illegal, and it can also lead to a few security threats. Before doing anything on a torrenting website, ensure that what you are doing is legal or illegal in your country. In the case you want to download a torrent, the usage of useful reliable and quality websites is useful. These kicks are torrents alternatives that people commonly use. How To Download Games From Kickass Torrents? A few people think that downloading games from Kickass or any torrent websites is terrible and requires technical information. Well, it is true that downloading a game from Kickass will take some work. However when you get used to it, everything will be as easy as clicks. Is The Kickass Torrents Safe? Security is a main problem when torrenting. By itself, torrent files are secure; however downloading them from the BitTorrent network can be a daunting task, especially when you use an unsecured Internet connection. A few torrent websites are fully affected with computer viruses. They are usually hidden in ads, click baits, and torrent files them. A few users are also falling prey to denial of service (DOS) in which perpetrators are blocking users from accessing the service or website on a specific server. It’s impossible to download the game for free that you want, without Kickass being able to access the torrent website or it is a proxy. To 10 Kickass Torrents Alternatives The Kickass Torrents is part of a reasonable effort to limit the amount of copyright infringement. But, those who want a torrent have found many alternatives. Let’s talk about the most famous Kickass Torrents alternatives. 1. The Pirate Bay Pirate Bay is a world famous torrent website. Over the years, it has controlled a lot of shutdowns and blocks. However to avoid possible shutdowns, the domain changes very frequently and sometimes goes completely offline. Luckily, you can still always access online technology, or find Pirate Bay Proxy. Pirate Bay provides you a wide collection of torrents, presently over 1,000,000 in various forms. The interface is easy to navigate, so you should have no trouble to find what you are looking for. Thanks to Pirate Bay’s notoriety, it has been blocked by several ISPs; however a strong VPN will help you control those restrictions. 2. Torrentdownloads TorrentDownloads is another famous torrent website and can be taken into consideration as a best alternative to Kickass. It gives a huge collection of torrent files and magnets on various categories that you can download. 3. Limetorrents LimeTorrents is a famous name in the torrent community and it is amazing with its green interface, and serves as a good alternative to Kickass. It has controlled to make it the top website of torrents in 2020 and in also in previous years. There is also a huge torrent catalog in the Limetorrents that is updated almost every hour. You can find torrents in special categories or in the list of Top torrents and latest torrents. 4. Rarbg RARBG is another competitor in the world of torrenting sites. The website has been based since 2008 and receives 40 million visits a month. Although the RARBG interface is a bit more compact than Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents – and the website is definitely worse. Visiting RARBG means watching top torrents in various categories as well as the latest news about popular digital products. However, RARBG is very bad when it comes to the use of ads. This is enough reason for people to generally stick to The Pirate Bay for their general torrenting needs. 5. 1337x It’s hard to run a torrent website for a whole decade and still don’t see it down. The 1337X has only managed to do so while a few other big names around it are circling. Although it has always been very famous, it has generally emerged as a second-choice option after the likes of Pirate Bay and KicksTorrents. But, KickassTorrents is shut down, and Pirate Bay is having a lot of trouble, so it’s not surprising that a lot of people turn to 1337x again. With over 67,000,000 per month visits, it is currently the most dynamic P2P community. At net performance, 1337x has the potential to make any large website successful in monetizing. The ‘Top 100’ lists they regularly list in each category is a round. As long as 1337x is available on the Internet, it will be seen as a powerful alternative to all of Torrent’s slain Titans. 6. Internet Archive Internet archive is a great place for free, legally available content on the web. The website stores 10,000,000 of various types of media, includes games, movies and music. You will even find a wide array of digital books, archive websites, photos and various digital sundries. Users can search for torrents by using the Archives torrents section of the website. Because the website uses the BitTorrent network, you can access the very large archive library using any torrent purchaser. Archive.org recommends Transmission, µTorrent, and Vuze. 7. Zooqle Zooqle is an emerging torrent tracker and a terrific kickass torrent alternative. Although the website has about 2,000 million added torrents per day, there are more than 3.5 million certified torrents per day. Zooqle has so far received little attention in the mainstream. That’s why it was able to use a .com domain name. Although even in case that changes in the future, Zooqle already has several alternative domains ready. To get the best experience of Zooqle, you have to create an account on Zooqle which permits you to configure subscriptions and RSS feeds. That way, as an instance, you’ll be alerted as soon as a new episode of your favorite TV show becomes available. 8. Isohunt IsoHunt is a high-torrents site that has a large network of torrent users. It provides a huge collection of torrents for download and allows users to upload multiple categories of torrents. The IsoHunt Directory consists of almost all famous categories through which you can browse files and download files instantly. 9. EZTV EZTV is not a beautiful website at all. Their metrics are not much more competitive than other websites, either: it has 20,000,000 visits every month and it also has download speed of 2-3 MB / s. Even so, owning one is still out of reach of the middle class person. EZ TV is a great alternative to KickassTorrents, as they have a huge collection of TV shows on the net, with millions of trackers. The EZ TV network is also amazingly dynamic, with new releases being uploaded quickly. That’s why a lot of users determine to use the site despite its ups and downs. 10. Vuze In case you use your torrent to download or share your files, you will be acquainted with Vuze. But, it also provides a separate service in which you can legally receive items (good if your country has banned the torch path). You will find many videos on offer under the title of Vuze Studio HD Network, its categories consists of gaming, technology, comedy, music videos, sports, science, motoring, and news, nature, movies and TV shows. Conclusion KickassTorrents is no longer with us; however there is no shortage of the best alternatives to KickassTorrents that provide the same or greater collection of torrent. In this article, I have mentioned the top 10 best alternatives to KickassTorrents in 2021. I hope you will enjoy one of these KickassTorrents alternatives.
  12. There are many doubts between downloading movie torrents and using streaming services, so we have separated 5 reasons why you prefer streaming Films are one of humanity's main pastimes. With its wide variety of approaches and themes, it is common for anyone to find some cinematographic work that pleases them. However, many people looking for a movie end up with two options: streaming services - such as Netflix , Amazon Prime Video , Disney + and a number of other platforms - or downloading movie torrents, which was once an easy way to find your favorite titles but today it is a source of problems - from media quality to copyright infringement. With that in mind, we've prepared some reasons to help you choose streaming over torrent. Index 1. How does the torrent work? 2. Streaming is safer than downloading movie torrents 3. Streaming takes full advantage of the connection speed 4. Concentrated content 5. Watching movies legally 6. Image quality and technologies 7. Conclusion How does the torrent work? Before getting into the reasons for using streaming, it's good to understand what a torrent is. Torrent is a heap of metadata that, when placed in a program that performs its reading, connects to other computers that are sharing the data indicated by the file, and begins to download them. There are many options for programs to download torrents , just as there are many sites to find and download them. All sites follow the same pattern: you search for something, it returns your available torrents . Sites like Pirate Bay, RARBG and Torlock follow this pattern and do not need registration. Some others, more exclusive and with files more difficult to find, need an account and have a minimum upload fee necessary for the user to continue using the site, as is the case with Bitsoup . In programs to download torrents, we have eMule , a great known for those who had access to the internet in the early 2000s, which has an internal search engine, which allows you to search the files inside it. The qbittorrent is another program to download torrents, much lighter and is currently the most popular customer in the world to share and download torrents. Streaming is safer than downloading movie torrents By using streaming you avoid the hacker attack, as in the 1995 film with Angelina Jolie that is on iTunes While downloading movie torrents may seem at first to be a cheaper option, there are many problems they can cause. One of them is that the downloaded files can actually bring viruses and other types of attacks to your computer, which can cause many problems to your PC, ranging from data loss to bank fraud. Most streaming services are on private servers that only employees of the responsible companies have access to, and go through several verification steps to ensure that the connection is secure and the film being transmitted comes securely to the user. With that, downloading movies becomes an increasingly less necessary process. Streaming takes full advantage of the connection speed Streaming achieves the Maximum Speed of your connection - and the movie of the same name is available on Amazon Prime Video The experience of choosing a movie at the video store is well replicated by streaming services. When you go to Netflix and choose a movie, for example, just press it and play, even being a little more comfortable than rental companies at the time since, we know, you needed to leave the house for that. When you decide to download movie torrents or download series, things change the scene. In addition to choosing the movie, there is still a wait until the file is downloaded to your computer, which makes the process a little longer. There is still the risk that sometimes the film will be downloaded and the user will only see that it came without subtitles or in a language that he does not understand. Very inconvenient. Concentrated content You can find streaming movies with a few clicks - and the Click movie is waiting for you on HBO GO Many people end up thinking that the wide range of streaming services nowadays can be a weak point, by taking away that feeling of having everything in the palms of the hand that Netflix in the middle of the past decade passed. But even with all that, it is still much easier to find content on services than on torrents. Torrents for some films often require extensive research and may well lead to exposure risks for the user, since some sites that are options for downloading torrents are very suspicious, with many masks (when you click on something, it takes you to a completely different website) or fake download buttons. As for streaming, depending on the content you want, you know exactly which service to subscribe to. There are also several streaming services or videos on demand for free, which feature a variety of titles that are not found on the major platforms. In Showmetech's guide to places to watch movies for free in 2021 , we’ve commented on some of them. To legally watch the films Brazilians who downloaded the movie Hellboy (2019) by torrent received a fine notification of R $ 3,000, but could have seen the film on Telecine Play or Looke When you download a torrent, you are pirating a movie. In 2020, thousands of Brazilians who downloaded the films Hellboy (2019) and Rambo: Until the End received a fine notification in the amount of R $ 3 thousand reais. In addition, even those who download other films that are not receiving fines may eventually receive this surprise letter and have to shell out a large amount of money. Streaming services, on the other hand, are official ways of watching movies, with all films that are on Disney + , GloboPlay and Netflix being legalized. By subscribing to any of these services, you are already paying to see the films available officially, and part of that money is also passed on to the producers of the films. Image quality and technologies Make the most of your television with the audio and video technologies available on streaming platforms Streaming services like Netflix nowadays are able to adapt the quality of the content being transmitted to your television and internet connection. In the torrent, you should look for the version of the movie in the desired quality, which already affects the speed enough to be able to stop and watch the movie, since the higher the quality, the larger the file size and the more time to download it. It is also important to note that technologies such as Dolby Vision, HDR and the like are normally already enabled within streaming services, if your device is compatible to activate these features, while in the torrent, it is one more detail that must be researched before downloading, and which also increases the file size. Conclusion In the end, from security to convenience, streaming services are a better tool for watching movies. Although torrents still find a lot of resistance, mainly due to their role in popular culture in the 2000s, the risks they pose, both in terms of data security and criminal security, are becoming increasingly obvious.
  13. The data that we are leaving on the network can play a bad past. In 2020, a Hawaii lawyer sued several users of the YTS torrent download portal after their owners gave away their users' personal data . That assignment was made through an agreement to avoid a major lawsuit, and in that lawsuit there were details such as email addresses. Now, new users are going to receive demands. The attorney, named Kerry Culpepper, subsequently proceeded to sue users who had downloaded the Ava and Rambo V: Last Blood movies . The demand, at first, seemed to affect RARBG users who had downloaded it. However, there was no evidence that those users had downloaded them, where the only thing that was shown in the lawsuit is that those torrents could be downloaded from that website, but not that they had been downloaded from it. 14 people who downloaded I Spit on Your Grave, sued Now, Culpepper goes after 14 people who downloaded and shared in 2020 the film " I Spit on Your Grave ", released in 2010 and which had a very poor gross of 1.3 million dollars compared to the 2 million it cost to make it. In it, those 14 1337x.to users are specifically mentioned , with email addresses and IP addresses when downloading torrent . Those users had an account on the 1337x web, using those email accounts. The funny thing is that the plaintiff does not specify where he obtained the email addresses, but we can get an idea. If YTS gave you user data, including user names, email and IP addresses, all you had to do was check the IP addresses and see if they matched those of those users. In turn, you can check if the email addresses have an account created on the web by asking to remember password. They ask operators to cut off their Internet access In the lawsuit, the Internet operators of those users and Google are asked to give them real data such as names or real physical addresses. In addition, they demand $ 150,000 in damages, even though it is a really crazy figure for people who have only shared one torrent. Along with this, they also ask that any company that provides services to those users, stop doing so. Those companies include operators, who are asked to leave those who have shared that information without the Internet, despite the fact that Internet access has been a basic right according to the UN since 2016. Be that as it may, it is worrying that IP addresses are associated with emails, since it is not certain that a person, under an IP address, is the one who has shared the content subject to copyright. Therefore, never give your real data when registering on a piracy website, since you can be involved in cases like those of these 14 people.
  14. The most visited torrent site in Bulgaria, Zamunda.net, is unavailable. The first signs of emerging problems with the operation of the tracker were observed from the evening of February 21. The site's collapse comes about a day after the office of the Prosecutor General office asked for help the US Department of Justice for blocking Zamunda. Already a year ago Sofia Prosecutor’s Office started pre-trial proceedings against Zamunda.net, ArenaBG.com, Zelka.org and PARBG.to on charges of intellectual property and copyrights violations. The Bulgarian authorities have conducted an international operation with the assistance of the United States, Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sweden and Switzerland. The aim was to block access to pirated websites. Users report that Zelka.org and ArenaBG.com are still available. RARBG.to cannot be visited for some time by users located on the territory of Bulgaria, but even the most basic and free VPN can change that, the pirates comment. The last big collapse of Zamunda happened at the end of 2019.It came following an alarm signal from US film giants Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Sony and Lionsgate, who had written a collective letter to Filmautor and the Ministry of Culture days earlier.It stated that due to the download of films, they were losing BGN 6 million a year. The struggle with torrent sites has been going on for more than a decade, but in general it has been ineffective.The example of the largest such site - The PirateBay - is illustrative.Despite attempts by US and Swedish authorities to crack down on the torrent tracker, it is still available today. The well-informed comment, though, that even if the collapse of Zamunda is related to an operation of the American and Bulgarian state authorities, the recovery of the servers can happen quickly due to the infrastructure of the torrent network.
  15. RARBG Proxy: This post provides you with information about RARBG, including how to unblock the site and what alternatives are available. RARBG is a website providing torrent files as well as magnet links for facilitating peer-to-peer file sharing via the BitTorrent protocol. Since 2014, RARBG has always been among the most popular torrent websites, according to TorrentFreak. The site ranked 4th on the list of most-visited torrent sites. However, it doesn’t let users upload their own links or files. In 2018, however, Hollywood obtained a blocking order against RARBG in India. Users have since looked for ways to work around the block and access the site through RARBG Proxy. Torrent websites have always faced the risk of being busted by watchdogs as well as original content creators. This is the reason why many popular torrent websites have been blocked in multiple countries. With that in mind, RARBG.to is just another torrent site to be banned in India and many other countries since it has torrent links to copyrighted content, which infringes the copyright of original content. RARBG Proxy: What is RABG? However, there are multiple ways to access blocked RARBG, you can use either RARBG proxy India or RARBG mirrors. In this post, we will clarify important information around this ban and what methods you can use to keep visiting RARBG. Table of Contents Where is RARBG banned? How to unblock RARBG? RARBG proxy list and mirror sites RARBG proxy alternatives Where is RARBG banned? To check if the site works in India, you can try opening the link to its homepage . If you cannot access the website in this conventional way, that means it has been banned in your country, which includes India, the UK, Australia, France, China, and Norway. How to unblock RARBG? If the government or your internet service provider has blocked the site in your region, you can still obtain access to the site and its content through mirror sites and proxies. These sites bypass the restrictions to help one unblock RARBG. Specifically, RARBG proxy server acts as a gateway between the destination website and your computer. Essentially, it’s an intermediary server that separates end users from the sites they are browsing. Proxy servers offer different levels of functionality, privacy, and security depending on each particular situation. RARBG proxy list and mirror sites In this section, we are glad to provide you with RARBG proxy server list as well as a few RARBG mirror sites that you can use to continue to view content from this website. RARBG Proxy and RARBG mirror sites for users to work around the ban and keep downloading content from RARBG RARBG proxy alternatives The Pirate Bay This is one of the most popular torrent sites of all, making it a perfect alternative to RARBG. On this website, there are millions of torrent links across various categories, and it also supports magnet links, featuring a simple interface, which is why so many people like using this site. TorLock You may have heard of this alternative as it’s also a very popular torrent tracker with users across the globe. It also makes a great alternative to RARBG proxy. The site provides users with a wide range of torrents along with an amazing user interface. In addition to that, it has high-quality reading materials and anime episodes if you are especially interested in these categories. More importantly, the site has over 4.8 million files, meaning you can find anything you want without having to go to another place. RARBG Proxy alternative: TorLock 1337x Like RARBG proxy, this is one of the most-visited torrent sites in the world. One of the best features of this website is its user-friendly interface, which can be easily mastered by anyone, even first-time users. The website underwent a major restoration that eliminated several serious security risks while the design was improved as well. The most interesting thing, however, is that the site doesn’t show up among search results on Google. YTS Before using this site, it’s important to remember that it focuses on movies only. With a beautiful user interface, the website offers a lot of titles, making it a perfect place for movie geeks. Furthermore, the torrents offered on this website are very light regarding bandwidth, which is an advantage it has over other sites out there. RARBG Proxy alternative: YTS Zooqle On this RARBG proxy alternative, there are over 37,000 movies as well as more than 600 series and TV shows, a huge library of content for any user. It also comes with a distinct user interface. The site is also easy to navigate, helping you find your favorite content quickly and simply. Torrentz2 This site is actually another version of the well-known site Torrentz. It features a minimalist user interface and mostly focuses on music. This is a good choice for those in need of a RARBG proxy.
  16. Movie tycoon Carlos Vasallo is suing YouTube for widespread copyright infringement. Despite sending over 10,000 takedown notices, pirated copies of his movies continue to appear. YouTube did offer access to its Content-ID system but the movie magnate refused, as that would require him to release the video platform from all possible piracy claims that took place in the past. To protect copyright holders, YouTube uses an advanced piracy recognition system that flags and disables videos that are uploaded without permission. This copyright filter, known as Content-ID, works reasonably well but its use is limited to a select group of major copyright holders. The Spanish-born movie tycoon Carlos Vasallo should fall into this category. Through several companies, the actor and producer owns the rights to the world’s largest collection of Mexican and Latin American movies. Unfortunately, many of these are illegally shared on YouTube. In 2015, Vasallo reached out to YouTube, hoping to fix this piracy problem. The video platform was open to explore several options and Mr. Juanjo Duran, Google’s Director of Latin Media and Entertainment, suggested the “Content-ID” system as an ideal solution. This sounds like a typical approach YouTube would have when dealing with major copyright holders. However, unlike others, Vasallo refused to use Content-ID system because it came with a major caveat. Mr. Vasallo had to release YouTube from all possible piracy claims that took place in the past. Movie Tycoon Sues YouTube in Florida Instead, the movie tycoon opted to send old-fashioned DMCA takedown notices. However, according to a lawsuit filed in a Florida federal court this week, that did little to stop people from pirating his films. Vasallo hired a New York law firm to police YouTube and send takedown notices when pirated copies appeared. While the takedown process worked, new copies were added constantly. Even banned users reportedly returned using new names. “Once a pirated movie was found, Mr. Vasallo and Plaintiff would send YouTube a takedown notice. YouTube would then remove the pirated video movie in its entirety. However, YouTube would not remove all matching videos, as YouTube would specifically only remove the one video from the one infringer related to the single infringing upload identified in the takedown notice. “The same infringer would be free to upload the video again until three takedown notices were filed against him within a ninety-day period. Then and only then, would YouTube cancel the infringer’s username. The same infringer could then create a new username and begin the process of posting the pirated videos all over again,” the complaint notes. Over the past several years, the law firm sent over 10,000 takedown notices for pirated films that were viewed more than 500 million times on YouTube. The video service maintains that this is how the DMCA works, but the movie tycoon argued that the company should do more. Content-ID Comes With a Caveat The complaint mentions the earlier discussions with YouTube about joining the Content-ID platform. At the time, YouTube said that it could “very easily” detect and block infringing content. However, in order to join, the movie tycoon had to sign a release. Under U.S. law, YouTube is not obliged to actively monitor for pirated content. The company told the movie tycoon that it’s protected by the DMCA. But what is the purpose of the release then, Vasallo wonders. “[I]f Defendants confidently rely on the protections afforded to them by the DMCA, then why did Defendants adamantly insist that Mr. Vasallo, as well as Plaintiff, release Defendants from all claims associated with Defendants’ prior acts of piracy? “The clear answer to this question is the following: Defendants consistently use the DMCA as both a shield and sword against the average copyright owner, such as Plaintiff in this case,” the complaint adds. ‘YouTube Should Proactively Monitor Piracy’ The lawsuit argues that YouTube should be required to take reasonable steps to anticipate and filter potential copyright infringements. This effectively means opening up the Content-ID system to all rightsholders without caveats. According to the movie mogul, YouTube has intentionally decided not to use the Content-ID process for all rightsholders. By doing so, it can monetize the billions of views these videos generate. “Accordingly, Defendants knowingly and willingly induced, facilitated, engaged, and promoted the infringement of Plaintiff’s copyrighted materials for their own financial benefit,” the complaint reads. Through the lawsuit, Vasallo requests damages for YouTube’s alleged copyright infringing activity. With over 700 copyrighted titles, the potential statutory damages add up to more than $100 million. In addition to ruling that YouTube willfully infringed copyrights, the movie tycoon also requests a permanent injunction to require the video platform to implement reasonable technologies to prevent or limit copyright infringement going forward. That sounds a lot like the EU’s ‘upload filter’ requirement.
  17. In this comprehensive guide, you’ll find the Best Torrent Sites for all your download needs. Downloading torrents has been the trend for multiple years now, with people acquiring many popular movies, tv show episodes, games, apps, and more to their favorite devices. Those new to torrenting might be interested to learn that it is a concept of file sharing through peer-2-peer sharing networks that are decentralized in nature. Because downloads are not stored on one particular server, the torrent software acquires them by grabbing small pieces of files from multiple locations (seeders) to downloaders (leechers). The downloads are balanced so that no one download comes from the same place. How to Choose the Best Torrent Site Choosing a torrent site can be a bit tricky. Many torrent sites are specialized or concentrated for particular things like movies or games or even applications. There are also metrics to consider. This can give the torrent user a better set of options when downloading from a particular site over another. These include the prevalence of frustrating advertisements, a strong content library, mirroring site alternatives (in case a particular server goes offline), monthly visitors (typically on more trusted websites), as well as upload/download ratios (higher ratios mean the file has been shared more often). Before we get to our top-picks, you should know that you should use a VPN when file sharing, or you run the risk to run into trouble. You should check our list of the best VPN for torrenting to download your torrents safely and anonymously. There are multiple well known, reliable, and trusted torrent sites for such downloads. These sites are also ones that have stood the test of time against the frequent shutdowns that plague the torrent world. Here is a list of the best 15 torrent sites to consider for downloading your favorite content. Note: Gotechtor does not condone piracy. If you use any of these sites mentioned in this guide for illegal activities, you’re on your own when it comes to dealing with the consequences. Top 15 Torrent Sites For 2021 The Pirate Bay Torrentz2 LimeTorrents Torlock 1337X RARBG YTS Torrends.io Zooqle TorrentDownloads Bibliotik Magnet DL EZTV IPTorrents Kickass Torrents 1. The Pirate Bay Screenshot: The Pirate Bay As easily the most recognizable name in the torrent-sphere, Pirate Bay is one of the oldest and most torrent content filled sites on the web today. Their user accessibility and features like identification of whether files are safe to download help them top the list of the best torrent sites. They may have had a long and questionable history, but the platform has hung tough with more torrent categories than many other torrent sites combined, with magnet link support and a very simple interface. 2. Torrentz2 The original Torrentz site had a minimalist interface and kept a low profile. Torrentz2 follows suit in both of those areas, with a particular heavy lean into music. The site hosts respectable download speeds and some great seeder/leecher ratios. They get over 20 million users a month and host torrentzeu.org (a mirror site). Their ad presence is especially low, which makes them a safer torrent option than many other options out there. 3. LimeTorrents Screenshot: LimeTorrents LimeTorrents is a good alternative to the bigger torrent sites. It hosts four mirror sites and enjoys over 17 million monthly visitors. They are pretty low on annoying advertisements which is a common deterrent from people visiting or using torrent sites and is a nice alternative to when other torrents have their servers go down. LimeTorrents provides an easy interface with a clean, organized layout, resulting in a great user experience. This is also a great place to come to find many new releases. 4. Torlock Screenshot: Torlock Unlike most of the other torrent options, Torlock is full of legitimate content. Their focus on eliminating fake content goes as far as paying users $1 for reporting fake torrents. The site hosts 3.4 million monthly users and combines a giant list of torrent options (almost 5 million of them), with a particular concentration for ebooks and active anime. It hosts things that are difficult to find on other torrent providers and has a very respectable download speed of 4.4 MB/second. The one drawback is the overwhelming level of advertisements. 5. 1337X Screenshot: 1337X 1337X is a hugely popular torrenting center as evidenced by its 71+ million monthly visitors and a near 11,000/5200 seeder and leecher ratio. It is loaded with content including music, games, movies, tv shows, documentaries, anime, apps, and adult entertainment. There are so many choices that if one was to arrive at 1337X not knowing what they wanted, they would still be able to find something that satisfies their craving. The revamped interface makes the site easy to navigate, the browsing features are superb, and the download speeds are a very respectable 4.2 MBs/second. While there is also a proverbial torrent of advertising, it has been lessened with the site’s recent facelift. 6. RARBG Screenshot: RARBG When it comes to finding new content and downloading it quickly, RARBG is a tough one to compete with. This site has stood the test of time, now in its 13th year of operation. Longevity has given it the ability to develop a reputation for being the source of many of the highest quality torrents. It has great download speeds (6.1 MBs/second) and hosts over 57 million monthly visitors. Its advertising popup prowess is not great, but it’s far from the worst offender in this regard. Its fine reputation in the torrent community has not gone unnoticed, however, as it is blocked from use in multiple countries around the world, but can be overcome by VPN usage. 7. YTS Screenshot: YTS It can be argued that behind Pirate Bay, YTS is the second most popular name in the torrent world. It gets visited by 33.5 million users every month and is well known for its vast and impressive movie library, with content specifically available in smaller sizes at HD quality. The content of the site is specifically focused on movies, particularly older, classic films that are hard to find on many other torrents that concentrate on new releases. The content is easy to browse and the advertisement prevalence is below average. 8. Torrends.io Screenshot: Torrends If avoiding ads is your fancy on torrent sites, Torrends.io might be a good choice. The site sees almost 3.5 million users monthly and has an easy browsing system with the home screen that utilizes an all-in-one approach of using other websites to scrape files from and compile the listings. It even shows popular trends and categories for downloadable content. While it does have its upsides, it has been noted recently that the site does seem to be down quite a bit. 9. Zooqle Screenshot: Zooqle Zooqle is a newcomer to the torrent world, but for a newer arrival, it certainly sports quite a following in terms of fan base numbers with 7.7 million monthly visitors. Its content ranges to every conceivable category but is best known for a great place to find games. Its search functionality is superb and the interface is light and easy to use, though as this is a developing project, it can use some improvements. There are hardly any ads and users have been trying to make suggestions as to how to make the site better, which will surely result in it becoming a big player in the torrent realm. 10. TorrentDownloads Screenshot: TorrentDownloads TorrentDownloads hosts a massive torrent library and an easy to navigate interface, offering many downloadable options, especially in terms of its vast movie collection. The site is clean and it is a good place to find some of the more obscure torrents for hard to acquire books, shows, and games. The download speeds are at 2.8 MB/s, which is not as great as many other torrent centers, but the site is not exactly unknown around the world, causing it to be blocked in many countries. 11. Bibliotik As the name suggests, Bibliotik is a book-heavy torrenting service, with almost 300,000 torrents available as part of a very active torrenting community. In operation since 2009, Bibliotik has seldom experienced dramatic service interruptions. The selection of e-books on the site is vast, spanning mainstream, niche, and classic books across all conceivable genres. The site gets roughly 200,000 monthly visitors, though it has been noted that the registration process is not exactly simple. 12. Magnet DL Screenshot: Magnet DL MagnetDL is an innovative platform that hosts a vast collection of magnet links and is one of the more popular torrents downloading destinations. Using a BitTorrent client installed on your device, you can download a wide array of files across different genres. These can be sorted by upload date, uploader reputation, and file size. The site has been operational for a better part of a decade, hosting over 9.5 monthly visitors. 13. EZTV Screenshot: EZTV After a bit of tumultuous history, EZTV has survived to become one of the premiere torrenting destinations for tv shows. With so many options between TV, cable, and streaming series TV craving audiences have a hard time coming across all of the choices in one simple place. EZTV makes it simple to find anything TV-related on their platform. The interface is a bit dated, but it’s intuitive and clean. There is even a page for popular TV shows to gather ideas about what other viewers are raving about. The active community constitutes the site’s 42+ million monthly visitors. 14. IPTorrents Screenshot: IPTorrents IPTorrents hosts over 700,000 torrents but requires only members who are active to indulge in its content consumption. That means any member using this private torrent medium must maintain a good seeder/leecher ratio to retain their membership. It is easy to join, but it’s private nature (often deeming it the private version of The Pirate Bay) makes staying part of the community challenging for the most passive members. For those that do remain active, a large library of content is available through a wide array of torrenting links. 15. Kickass Torrents Screenshot: Kickass Torrents One of the most longevous torrenting sites is Kickass Torrents. Like many other longstanding sites, they offer a vast array of choices across all genres and niches. Over time, the site has experienced several overhauls and facelifts in terms of functionality, so the newest version works smoothly and hosts a clean, easy interface. The ads are minimal, a fact likely appreciated by the site’s 6.5 million monthly visitors.
  18. Can a VPN provider be held liable when its users illegally stream films and TV series? What if that provider markets itself as a way to avoid “threats and jail time” for illegal viewing? Those are the issues posed to a Florida federal judge in a suit involving the piracy of films starring Amy Schumer, Gary Oldman and Woody Harrelson. Voltage Holdings, Millennium Funding and Hunter Killer productions on Thursday sued 1707 Management and its owner, Charles Muszynski, arguing they’re liable for users’ infringement of I Feel Pretty, Shock and Awe, Automata, Survivor and Hunter Killer. The rights owners argue LiquidVPN, which they allege to be owned by Muszynski and 1707, is purposely friendly to copyright infringers — noting its practice of assigning anonymous IP addresses and marketing that touts how it makes piracy easier. “The LiquidVPN Defendants actively promote their LiquidVPN Service for the purpose of movie piracy, including of infringing Plaintiffs’ Works,” states the complaint. “The LiquidVPN Defendants’ website includes a statement that their VPN service is the ‘Best VPN for Torrenting and P2P Filesharing today’ over the image of the notorious movie piracy website Pirate Bay.” It continues, “The LiquidVPN Defendants further state, ‘Experience everything Popcorn Time has to offer in the United States and the UK. Except the risks’, ‘Stream Content Anonymously. Why bother risking complaints from your ISP, settlement demands, threats and jail time for streaming your favorite TV show.'” After discovering the piracy, they sent notices of infringement that they allege were received by LiquidVPN after passing though multiple other companies. Those went ignored, and the rights holders argue the service isn’t protected by the safe harbor afforded to ISPs under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because it fails to terminate service for repeat infringers. It not only fails to take any action, according to the complaint, it brags about ignoring such notices on its site. The rights owners are suing 1701 and Muszynski for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. They’re also suing the infringers themselves, a group of unnamed BitTorrent users who illegally uploaded or downloaded the films, for direct copyright infringement. They’re seeking an injunction that would restrain LiquidVPN from providing access to infringing material and encouraging users to pirate the content, as well as actual or statutory damages
  19. With reports of digital piracy increasing by more than 60 per cent in some countries during the past 12 months, INTERPOL is launching a new project to tackle this fast growing crime area. With EUR 2.7 million funding from the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sport and Tourism, the five-year INTERPOL Stop Online Piracy (I-SOP) initiative will counter online piracy and crimes involving intellectual property rights infringement, identifying and dismantling linked illicit online marketplaces, as well as targeting the criminal networks and confiscating their assets. The Korean National Police Agency will play an important role in collaborating with INTERPOL to build partnerships with industry, international organizations and academia. The initiative will coordinate the global law enforcement response to digital piracy which can be highly lucrative for criminals with very low risk. It also has a negative impact on the creative sector and economies, ultimately affecting consumers. Korea is supporting a new INTERPOL project tackling digital piracy In a virtual ceremony, INTERPOL Secretary General Jürgen Stock, Hwang Hee, Korea’s Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism and Kim Chang-Yong, Commissioner General of the Korean National Police Agency signed the agreement in support of I-SOP. “Online copyright piracy is a growing threat to Korea as it is to other countries around the world. The economies of our nations and the livelihoods of our people depend on robust action being taken by many agencies working together to defeat this problem. As such, I welcome the opportunity for Korea and INTERPOL to work in partnership together and to provide leadership and direction in respect to this initiative,” said Hwang Hee, the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism. “Digital piracy is yet another crime area impacted by COVID-19. Confinement linked with reduced income has seen a global surge in the past 12 months,” said Secretary General Jürgen Stock. “Korea’s support for this project, which will enable INTERPOL to assist countries develop a more targeted response in identifying the criminal networks, which can use their illicit profits to fuel other crimes,” added Secretary General Stock. “The Korean National Police Agency has a long tradition of working with INTERPOL to combat transnational crime. We are proud to continue this partnership in relation to the issue of online piracy, which will ensure that law enforcement and private sector partners across Asia and around the world can join forces in order to reduce criminality, seize illegal assets and bring offenders to justice,” emphasized Kim Chang-Yong, Commissioner General of the Korean National Police.
  20. The social media Parler has been under pressure since the attack on the American congress building Kapitolium. The service was criticized, among other things, for being used to plan the storm, and over the weekend the app was removed from both Google's and Apple's app stores . Amazon has also chosen to stop offering its server solution to social media. Parler is a kind of conservative equivalent of Twitter that has gained a lot of ground among Donald Trump's supporters, especially since he was shut down from Twitter. Pirate Bay was never shut down Now Parler gets a boot from the activist, IT entrepreneur and The pirate bay co-founder Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi. He finds it strange how a well-funded site like Parler, has failed with something that the file-sharing site The pirate bay has succeeded in for so long. “The Pirate bay, the world's most censored website, started by children, run by people with alcohol problems, drugs and money, still running after almost two decades. Parler and Gab (another social media editor's note) have all the money but not the skill or the right attitude. Embarrassing ", he writes on Twitter. BREAKIT24LIVE Only 1 day left - soon we will run 24 hours with Sweden's business stars in Breakit24live The Pirate bay offered a service where anyone could upload and download files of various kinds. The site became popular for downloading movies and games, for example, and has for many years been tamped with organizations, countries and individuals who wanted to shut down the site and the founders have also been sentenced to both prison and damages for their work with the site. Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi also points out that The Pirate Bay had the US government, several European countries and Russia against it. Tough criticism of the platforms When Breakit reaches Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, he develops his criticism. "Parler criticizes 'big tech' a lot, they criticize the establishment - even if they themselves are part of it. Then they build a service where everything depends on Amazon and others that they complain so much about. It's very strange. If you are going to build something that you think is independent, you can not build something where you are actually dependent on others ", he says. He himself has no problem with Amazon throwing out Parler, or Twitter shutting down Trump. “I think that's right. But it's too late. Donald Trump was supposed to be fired a long time ago, but he is doing so now because he can no longer shut them down. They are not afraid anymore and then you kick him out ", he says and continues. Do not think that much will happen “Then the second question is what to allow companies to control. There, we in the pirate world have been nagging for 15 years that it should be regulated politically what power the private companies should have. Because while politicians criticize 'big tech' for making arbitrary decisions, they have not been given any tools. " What do you think will happen in the discussion about platform rights and obligations? "I do not think it will happen that much more. Parler will find any cash web hosting provider that accepts them. Unfortunately, the important discussion dies out, the one that I think would have been very interesting to have: What are the restrictions and above all what rights do you have on the internet. It would be nice if it was a decision that there was a process around and not something that was just a decision from individual companies. " At the time of writing, Parler is still extinguished. The company's CEO John Matze has previously said that they will try to get the site up again as soon as possible. "We will do our best to get back online as soon as possible, but if it gets awkward, it's because every single company we've talked to says they do not want to work with us," he told Fox News
  21. A class action lawsuit has been filed against YouTube, Google and Alphabet by a composer who claims YouTube allows copyrighted works to appear on the platform, infringing on composers’ rights as copyright holders. Plaintiffs Maria Schneider and Pirate Monitor LTD say YouTube has facilitated and induced a “hotbed” of copyright infringement through its development and implementation of a copyright enforcement system that protects only the most powerful copyright owners, such as major studios and record labels. Schneider is a multiple Grammy Award-winning composer and holds copyrights to numerous works, including “Hang Gliding,” “Green Piece” and “Journey Home.” She says these songs have been posted in full or in part on YouTube and have been viewed by YouTube users. The plaintiff claims she has sent multiple takedown requests to YouTube to remove infringing videos from 2013 to the present, including videos that contain her copyrighted songs. She says that after she submitted the takedown requests, each of her songs has been subsequently posted in full or in part on YouTube without her authorization. “By being forced to continuously self-police uploads across YouTube’s billions of uploads, as opposed to automatic and preemptive blocking, Plaintiff Schneider is forced to weigh the further financial damage caused to her by alienating performance groups, including those who purchased her music scores,” the YouTube class action lawsuit says. The plaintiffs maintain that copyright holders should not be forced to repeatedly demand that the same platform take down infringing uses of the same copyrighted works, while other rights holders are provided access to standard digital fingerprinting and blocking tools. Lawsuit: YouTube Provides No Meaningful Copyright Protections Schneider claims to have been left behind by YouTube’s copyright enforcement system and instead is provided no meaningful ability to police the extensive infringement of her copyrighted works. The copyright management tool that is provided to the “behemoths” of the creative industry is called Content ID, a digital fingerprinting tool that compares videos being uploaded on YouTube to a catalog of copyrighted material submitted by those entities that are permitted to use Content ID. The YouTube class action lawsuit alleges that not only is Content ID not available to Schneider, but it actually insulates the vast majority of known and repeated copyright infringers from YouTube’s repeat infringer policy, thereby encouraging its users’ continuing upload of infringing content. “Defendants Alphabet, Google, and YouTube reap billions of dollars annually from the online hosting of videos, including millions of works that infringe on the exclusive copyrights of Plaintiffs and the Class,” the YouTube class action lawsuit goes on to state. The plaintiffs claim the defendants permit and facilitate the infringement because it furthers their growth and revenue strategies and because they have determined that the plaintiffs and Class Members lack the resources necessary to combat copyright infringement on the scale at which it is perpetuated on YouTube. Schneider says a vast majority of pirated content draws users to the site and the growth in users incentivizes the posting of more content on YouTube, which in turn enables the defendants to reap more advertising revenue. Smaller rights holders, which include the plaintiffs and proposed Class Members are denied access to Content ID and thus are relegated to inferior and time consuming manual means of trying to police and manage their copyrights such as scanning the entirety of YouTube postings and searching for keywords, titles and other potential identifiers. “Defendants have, in effect, created a two-tiered system whereby the rights of large creators with the resources to take Defendants to court on their own are protected, while smaller and independent creators like Plaintiffs and the Class are deliberately left out in the cold,” the YouTube class action lawsuit maintains. The plaintiffs claim that the superior protections of the Content ID system are completely denied to the plaintiffs and Class Members no matter how many times their copyrighted works are infringed on the YouTube platform. They say YouTube exerts significant control over which infringing videos may be published on its site and which infringing videos are never viewed by the public. “Plaintiffs have had their exclusive copyrights infringed multiple times, despite having sent prior successful takedown notices for those very same works and despite Defendants’ having actual and constructive knowledge that YouTube is being used continuously to infringe Plaintiffs’ copyrights,” the YouTube class action lawsuit says. The plaintiffs maintain that the ready availability on YouTube of unauthorized copyrighted materials and the “whack-a-mole” approach required for creators to remove infringing material works disincentive the creation of new works and reduce the value of all works. Pirate Monitor Exits Suit Pirate Monitor has voluntarily dismissed itself from the litigation, according to court documents submitted on March 8, 2021. The move comes after YouTube’s effort to dismiss the class action lawsuit in a motion filed with the California federal court in September. “Voluntary dismissal without a Court order is proper because all parties have stipulated to this dismissal and signed below,” states the short stipulation of dismissal submitted by Pirate Monitor to the California federal court. “No compensation was paid to Pirate Monitor LTD by Defendants in connection with this voluntary dismissal.” Lead plaintiff Schneider remains in the lawsuit claiming that, without access to YouTube’s Content ID system, she must troll the site for copyright violations of her work. Schneider must also face YouTube’s counterclaim that she has sufficient access to Content ID through her publishing agent. Do you own copyrighted material that has been placed on YouTube? Leave a message in the comments section below. The plaintiffs are represented by George A. Zelcs, Randall P. Ewing Jr., Ryan Z. Cortazar, Stephen M. Tillery, Steven M. Berezney, Michael E. Klenov and Carol O’Keefe of Korein Tillery LLC and Joshua Irwin Schiller and Philip C. Korologos of Boies Schiller Flexner LLP. The YouTube Class Action Lawsuit is Maria Schneider, et al. v. YouTube LLC, et al., Case No. 5:20-cv-04423, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
  22. The operators of a South Korean pirate website have been ordered to pay compensation to around 50 online comics creators for using their works without permission, judicial sources said Friday. The Seoul Central District Court ruled in favor of the creators in the damages lawsuit they filed in October 2019 against the pirate website named Bamtoki. The court ordered its three operators to pay between 1.5 million won (US$1,366) and 6 million won to each plaintiff. Bamtoki was one of the largest illegal distributors of online comics, or so-called webtoons. It was shut down in July 2018, along with 10 other illegal content sharing sites. This captured image, provided by Yonhap News TV, shows the Bamtoki website, which had been the largest illegal distributor of online comics, or so-called webtoons. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) hide caption The court said the defendants violated the authors' rights to reproduce and publicly share their works by unlawfully uploading them on the pirate website and allowing visitors to read them for free. The defendants argued that no damage has been done to the authors since exclusive publication rights of the webtoons belong to the portal operators, such as Naver Corp. and Lezhin Entertainment, not the authors. The court, however, dismissed their claim, saying that the authors suffered financial damage under their profit distribution contracts with the portal companies. The plaintiffs had originally sought reparations of 10 million won each, but the court said compensation of 3 million won per comic and 1.5 million won in the case of a joint production were deemed adequate. In a separate case, Bamtoki was ordered to compensate webtoon platforms some 2 billion won for stealing content from them.
  23. The operator of Canada's Super Channel has asked Alberta’s superior court to issue an order preventing Staples, Best Buy and other retailers from selling 'pirate' set-top boxes in their stores. Allarco Entertainment seeks an immediate injunction, claiming that the retailers' staff offer advice on how to use the devices for infringing purposes. In September 2019, Super Channel owner Allarco Entertainment filed a lawsuit in Canada’s Federal Court targeting Staples Canada, Best Buy Canada, London Drugs, Canada Computers, several related companies and up to 50,000 ‘John Doe’ customers. The controversial legal action saw Allarco accuse the retailers and their staff of promoting, encouraging and instructing in the use of set-top boxes that could enable buyers to access copyright-infringing content. The complaint was supported by 100 hours of undercover recordings that purported to show retailers’ staff showing prospective customers how to use software such as Kodi, or offering advice on where to get devices configured for piracy. Allarco demanded an injunction to prevent the defendants from “communicating or facilitating the communication” of its works without permission, including by “configuring, advertising, offering for sale or selling Pirate Devices.” Allarco Ends Federal Court Lawsuit, Launches Another A month after the lawsuit was filed, Canadian lawyer Howard Knopf wrote that in nearly four decades of being an intellectual property lawyer, he had never seen a more unusual Statement of Claim. He noted that it claimed copyright infringement in unspecified works, circumvention, making available, unspecified “pirate devices”, trademark infringement, the Criminal Code, through to theft, stealing, interference with the economic and business relations of the Plaintiff, and conspiracy. After the retailers fought back, Allarco discontinued its Federal Court lawsuit on January 6, 2020. However, Allarco had already filed another similar lawsuit on December 6, 2019, this time at the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta (Alberta’s superior court). The complaint added unknown suppliers of ‘pirate’ devices as defendants and demanded CAD$50m in damages. “It’s too early to speculate about what Allarco will attempt to do and what the Court might let it do about the 50,000 John Doe Customers or the now added John Doe Suppliers and how their interests will be represented if things ever get anywhere near that far,” Knopf wrote at the time. However, several months later, a new report indicates that matters are now progressing. Allarco Demands ‘Pirate’ Set-Top Device Ban Doubling down on its allegations of wrongdoing at the retailers, Allarco is now demanding an injunction from the Court that would prevent them from offering the set-top boxes for sale. Whether the Court will find such a request reasonable in respect of devices that are used by millions to access entirely legal services such as Netflix is yet to be determined. Allarco, meanwhile, believes that people buy them for only one thing – piracy. “The only reason why people buy these boxes is to steal content,” says Allarco president and chief executive officer Donald McDonald, as quoted by Globe and Mail. Interestingly, in common with his counterparts right across the streaming industry, McDonald says that the ‘pirate’ devices – which are largely Android-based and imported from China – are often preloaded with malware that targets consumers and puts their security at risk. “These devices are dangerous to your home network, dangerous to your personal data and could end up costing you a lot more money in the end,” he says, showing concern for the people his company is hoping to sue. Retailers Deny The Allegations Ever since the first lawsuit was filed in 2019, Staples Canada, Best Buy Canada, London Drugs, and Canada Computers have vigorously denied the Allarco/Super Channel allegations. All were reportedly sent cease-and-desist notices before the actions were filed but all claim to have acted within the law. “We offer technology from reputable manufacturers and leading brands. We take claims of intellectual property infringement seriously, but we believe that Super Channel’s claims are without merit, and intend to defend this action vigorously,” an earlier Best Buy statement reads. While Staples and Best Buy are opting not to comment at this stage, London Drugs said it would “never intentionally take or condone” any action that would infringe intellectual property rights. “London Drugs has always respected the rights of content creators and holders of copyright in all forms. We sell products and provide services for many parties engaged in content creation and distribution and recognize and fully support their right to fair compensation,” the company says.
  24. An Israeli court ruled in favor of ZIRA, a consortium of rights owners and video distributors, and issued an injunction to the social media service Telegram, which must remove infringing content from its service. Telegram was said to have become an alternative to download sites that have been shut down. The injunction, filed in February, settles a suit filed by ZIRA and several other media companies in 2020. The decision document also identified a number of additional Internet service providers as defendants. Acccording to one report, while Telegram insisted that it took content down as soon as it received complaints, the plaintiffs thought Telegram was inconsistent in doing so. Telegram has also been ordered to more closely monitor any group or user using Telegram to upload movies, TV series, music and Hebrew translations without the rights to do so. Telegram must also pay the equivalent of US$30,000 in damages and US$60,000 in legal expenses. Why this matters ZIRA is similar to other media industry groups, like AVIA in Asia/Pacific, MPAA and ACE in the US, and others elsewhere, which advocate against piracy and use their combined leverage to promote the prosecution of copyright infringement. The plaintiffs in this case were ZIRA, United King Films 1990 Distribution Ltd, DBS Satellite Services, HOT Communication Systems Ltd, and Media Network Limited.
  25. Media companies and other content creators no longer have a federal remedy against State governmental entities that infringe their copyrights under a unanimous decision issued on Monday, March 23, 2020. In Allen v. Cooper, the US Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the Fourth Circuit’s decision to strike the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990 as unconstitutional. The CRCA had completely abrogated the States’ sovereign immunity with respect to copyright infringement. This allowed plaintiffs to sue States for infringement and to hold them liable to the same extent as any other defendant. In 1999, however, the Supreme Court held unconstitutional a nearly identical statute that had abrogated State sovereign immunity with respect to patent infringement. Twenty-one years later, the Allen Court applied that precedent to invalidate the CRCA. The rationale of both decisions was identical. Under the doctrine of sovereign immunity as the Court has constructed it in the years since the CRCA was passed, the Copyright and Patent Clause of Article I in the Constitution does not provide Congress the power to abrogate States’ immunity. The 14th Amendment does—but only if the remedy adopted is “congruent and proportional” to well-documented violations of due process by the States. In the context of copyright infringement, according to the Allen Court, this required Congress to make specific findings that States had been engaged in widespread, intentional infringement for which they were not otherwise providing compensation to copyright owners. The CRCA’s legislative record included a 158-page report supporting the Act by the then-Register of Copyrights, which had been informed by a year-long examination and public comments from 40 copyright holders and industry groups. Nevertheless, the Court dissected the substance of this report and the remaining legislative history and found it insufficient to justify the CRCA’s wholesale abrogation of sovereign immunity. The majority opinion held the door open to a future attempt by Congress to adopt a more evidence-based narrowly tailored abrogation—in part by being remarkably frank about the negative consequences of the Court’s decision for content creators. Writing for the majority, Justice Kagan wrote that, by adapting the intent of the CRCA to the Court’s evolving jurisprudence on sovereign immunity, Congress could “effectively stop States from behaving as copyright pirates.” Concurring, Justice Breyer was even more pointed: “one might think that Walt Disney Pictures could sue a State ... for hosting an unlicensed screening of the studio’s 2003 blockbuster film, Pirates of the Caribbean (or any one of its many sequels). Yet the Court holds otherwise.” Indeed, the underlying facts that gave rise to the Allen case in the first place involved the State of North Carolina posting unauthorized copies of an independent documentarian’s copyrighted videos to its State-owned website. Unless and until Congress takes up the majority’s invitation to try again, therefore, media companies and other copyright owners will have few options to curtail infringement of their copyrights by State governments and entities. And even if a new statute could pass constitutional muster, the rationale of Allen v. Cooper may limit Congress’ ability to restrain State-sponsored copyright piracy.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.