@Achelous please close the thread

@HOCD1A035 i apply for the account

Originally set to debut exclusively in theaters in 2022, Paramount has officially delayed Transformers: Rise of the Beasts to summer 2023.Paramount delays Transformers: Rise of the Beasts release date to summer 2023. After giving Michael Bay control of the Transformers franchise for nearly a decade, Paramount began shifting the series in a new direction following Transformers: The Last Knight's release. This led to the development of Bumblebee and plans to reboot the franchise. The studio spent a few years developing different ideas for the following main installment of the series before finalizing a deal with Steven Caple Jr. (Creed II) to direct Transformers 7 and bring Beast Wars characters to life.

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts stars Anthony Ramos (In the Heights) and Dominique Fishback (Judas and the Black Messiah), as the franchise is introducing new human characters to go along with its fresh direction. It will follow them in a 1994-set story that involves Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, and other G1 designed Autobots. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts will also excitingly introduce Optimus Primal and new Transformers factions: Predacons, Terrorcons, and Maximals. With principal photography wrapping in October 2021, all signs pointed to Transformers 7 speeding towards its previously announced summer 2022 release date.

The pirate site blocklist maintained by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has grown to include well over 5,000 domain names. The list is maintained by reporters from various countries and is used by various major advertising companies to prevent money from flowing to pirate sites. Full details on this blocklist remain a mystery, for now.

pirate flagsMost pirate sites and apps won’t survive without ad revenue. This is why the advertising industry is seen as an ally in the fight against piracy.

Over the years, several ad-focused anti-piracy initiatives have emerged. In the UK, hundreds of advertising agencies began banning pirate sites, and the European Union chimed in as well.

WIPO’s Pirate Site Blocklist
These initiatives are relatively local while many pirate sites cater to a global audience. This lack of coordination motivated the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to develop a system that’s coordinated worldwide, with input from around the globe.

WIPO, which is part of the United Nations, was founded more than 50 years ago with the aim of protecting intellectual property. This includes combating online piracy, something it hopes to facilitate with its blacklist.

The idea for such a global database was first introduced by WIPO in 2017 and, behind the scenes, it was developed into a fully operational resource. It was initially rolled out as the ‘BRIP’ Database, short for “Building Respect for Intellectual Property,” but was later renamed to “WIPO Alert”.

Cutting Off Ad Revenue
The goal of the project is simple: allow stakeholders from member states to report problematic sites and share the resulting list with advertisers, so they can block bad apples. This should result in less money going to pirate sites, making it harder for them to generate profit.

At the moment, little is known about the effectiveness of the WIPO Alert system since the organization and its partners haven’t released much detail. What we do know is that earlier this year, there were 5,800 domain names reported as “copyright infringing” sites.

Needless to say, this is a massive blocking campaign, arguably one of the largest in the world. What’s concerning, however, is that there’s little information available on what sites are included.

WIPO Can’t Guarantee Accuracy
As we highlighted in the past, WIPO says that it can’t guarantee that the websites listed in its system are indeed copyright infringing. This responsibility lies completely with the reporting organizations.

“WIPO is simply providing a service to its Member States and to the international advertising industry in facilitating global access to data compiled at national level. The national agencies which create the lists of sites remain solely responsible for their contents,” the organization writes in its FAQ.

Initially, it was unknown who these national reporting agencies are but WIPO has made some progress on this front. There’s now a public page that shows which organizations are maintaining the blocklists.

The list of reported organizations includes Roskomnadzor from Russia, Italy’s AGCOM agency, CODA from Japan, Korea’s Copyright Protection Agency, Lithuania’s RTCL, and a Spanish Government department. Some blocking agencies publicize details on the blocked sites, but others intentionally keep these from public view.

A few weeks ago we reached out to WIPO requesting more details about the system and the blocked URLs. Despite confirmation that our inquiry had been received, there was no response. When we tried again this week WIPO continued its silence.

While we have no reason to believe that most of the sites in the “WIPO Alert” database are indeed infringing, the current system makes it hard to verify this and spot potential errors. This can cause some serious issues.

National Rules Differ
Russia’s Roskomnadzor, for example, previously instructed local ISPs to block 13.5 million Amazon IP-addresses to prevent subscribers from accessing the Zello app. And the same organization is cracking down on “unauthorized” VPNs too, and has threatened to block Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

The examples above are not strictly related to copyright but it shows that blocking standards can be quite different from country to country. On its website, WIPO acknowledges this by stressing that reported sites are deemed to be copyright infringing based on “national rules.”

The varying standards are also apparent when we look at the sites and services that copyright holders report to the US Trade Representative as notorious piracy markets. Just a few weeks ago, the MPA flagged Telegram as a piracy haven, and Russia’s social networking site VK.com was called out as well.

Interestingly, the MPA also reported the advertising company PopAds as a notorious piracy market. This, despite the fact that PopAds actively uses the WIPO Alert system to block pirate sites.

There’s no evidence that any of the services mentioned above are on WIPO’s blocklist. But that’s exactly the problem. At the moment, there is no way to check and scrutinize one of the largest blocking operations on the Internet.

WIPO stresses that its Alert system helps brands to avoid the negative reputational effect they can face when their ads appear on pirate sites. Nothing is said, however, about the potential reputational damage for the WIPO Alert system that may occur if a legitimate site inadvertently ends up on its list.

@Achelous is animetorrent will open their invite system or they will open their door

Games Category Enabled

Hey, everyone!

Just a small update (a longer site update will, hopefully, be posted soon). We have enabled the Games category for uploading. While the rules still aren't set in stone, we figured it would be easier to have these uploads in a centralized category moving forward.

Basically, just keep doing what you are doing for now and abide by the "10 Year Rule" when uploading content.

If you have any questions, please submit a staff ticket or ask in IRC!

Thanks!

-CRT Staff

Ahoy titans,

A handful of invites were placed in the bonus shop at a fair price.

Anyone can buy it, but it can only be used from the rank of "Power User". A maximum of 5 pieces per account are allowed. *
All invitations that have been purchased too much will be automatically deducted and your points will be gone too!

Please consider that you are liable for your invited users for a while, distribute your invitations carefully and thoughtfully when you invite!

Raw, powerful, and tonally balanced, The Souvenir Part II brings the fraught tale of a young, grieving artist to a wonderful, empowering finish.
Joanna Hogg’s 2019 arthouse gem, The Souvenir, captivated audiences with its nuanced foray into tragic love, one bound by intimacy entangled in toxic patterns. Set in 1980s Britain, The Souvenir followed film student Julie (Honor Swinton Bryne), who gets involved in a tumultuous relationship with the charming, manipulative Anthony (Tom Burke), who later turns out to be a heroin addict. At the end of The Souvenir, Anthony is found dead in a public toilet due to drug overdose, leaving a traumatized Julie with the burden of unimaginable grief and the hypnotic lull of rose-tinted memories. Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II is a grander, more artistic portrait of a young woman on the verge of untangling herself from the clutches of the past, and this semi-autobiographical cinematic vignette shines brighter than its predecessor. Raw, powerful, and tonally balanced, The Souvenir Part II brings the fraught tale of a young, grieving artist to a wonderful, empowering finish.

The Souvenir Part II opens with a still-aching Julie, who is recuperating at the lovely, idyllic country house of her parents Rosalind (Tilda Swinton) and William (James Spencer Ashworth). While Julie’s parents are unable to truly relate to her struggles as a filmmaker and the acute loneliness after one loses their lover, they remain consistently tender and unflinchingly supportive of their daughter throughout. In an especially heartbreaking scene, Julie visits Anthony’s grieving parents, experiencing a loss of words despite being deeply empathetic to their situation, as she is unable to express her grief or navigate the remnants of memory. While she attempts to fill the void of intimacy within her by sleeping with one of her actor acquaintances, Jim (Charlie Heaton), Julie gradually shifts her focus to her inner calling, struggling to figure out the challenges involved in making her graduation film, which also happens to be a memorial for Anthony.

Clifford will entertain the youngest movie-goers, but most audiences will be bored by its stale jokes, stereotypical characters, and lazy writing.
As a movie aimed at young children, Clifford The Big Red Dog is at least appropriate for its intended audience. Unfortunately, this dog-as-big-as-a-pony show is not very appealing to anyone else. Despite a star-studded ensemble cast of comedians — and almost 60 years' worth of source material to draw from — not even toddlers will be howling with laughter at the movie's flimsy attempts at humor, which often resort to outdated stereotypes, overused gags, and potty humor. Clifford will entertain the youngest viewers, and is destined to be the kind of film preschoolers want to watch again and again, but most audiences will be bored by its stale jokes, two-dimensional characters, and lazy writing.

Clifford The Big Red Dog is a Walt Becker film with several writers receiving credit (never a good sign): Jay Scherick, David Ronn, and Blaise Hemingway wrote the screenplay, while Justin Malen and Ellen Rapoport are credited for the story. Norman Bridwell, of course, wrote the beloved book series that the movie is based on. Like the source material, Clifford The Big Red Dog is about a young girl named Emily Elizabeth who has a massive red dog as a pet. Despite the animal's giant size, he is a lovable, gentle, and kind companion. The 2021 movie takes significant liberty with the source material though, inventing two somewhat contradictory origin stories and making Clifford into a big red puppy (rather than a dog).

Despite strong visuals and a solid twist towards the end, Lair ends up being a run-of-the-mill horror that flounders through with dull execution.

Most horror films that hinge upon haunted artifacts usually rely upon a formulaic setting inside a confined space, birthing suspense and genuine scares through tense atmosphere and effective twists. Adam Ethan Crow’s Lair starts off strong with a promising premise, but it fails to build up momentum and invest in deepening the characters. The result is a disappointing, uneven mess. Despite strong visuals and a solid twist towards the end, Lair ends up being a run-of-the-mill horror that flounders through with dull execution.

Lair opens with a man, Ben Dollarhyde (Oded Fehr), brutally murdering his wife and child, who is later visited in prison by his friend, occult expert Steven Caramore (Corey Johnson). While demanding answers as to why Dollarhyde would commit such a heinous act, the latter claims that he was possessed by a haunted artifact, one of many items Caramore himself had given to his friend. A skeptic through and through, Caramore initially rejects this possibility, but after Dollarhyde’s lawyer (Alexandra Gilbreath) asks him to look into it, he decides to carry out a dangerous experiment of his own.

Three seedbox providers have announced that they will block their users from sharing on at least three named trackers. While one appears to have decided to act voluntarily, TorrentFreak is informed that a company operating under two brands is now being investigated for criminal copyright infringement.

please seedOver the past year in particular, anti-piracy group Rights Alliance has been applying maximum pressure to various players in the piracy ecosystem.

Through detailed investigations that are ultimately referred to local law enforcement, one of the group’s main aims is to disrupt and ultimately disassemble the private torrent site scene in Denmark. With the shutdown of several major private trackers in recent months, Rights Alliance clearly has the momentum but that isn’t to say that clearing-up operations aren’t needed.

Last week news broke that six people had been arrested following criminal referrals by Rights Alliance relating to private torrent sites ShareUniversity, DanishBytes, and potentially others. An aspect of the operation last week will be of interest to private tracker users all over Europe and potentially even the United States.

Seedboxes Providers and Sellers Under Pressure
The revelation came from the Public Prosecutor for Special Economic and International Crime (SØIK) which indicated that one of the arrested men reportedly sold access to seedboxes, a BitTorrent-related term for specially-configured servers that allow people to share content remotely.

These servers were reportedly rented by BitTorrent users for use on one or more of the private trackers to share around 3,800 copyrighted works.

It’s important to note that seedboxes aren’t illegal per se but if they are used to share infringing content then there are implications for users and seedboxes providers alike, when certain conditions are met. The circumstances surrounding last week’s arrests will become clearer in the coming weeks and months but in the meantime, some providers are already taking action.

Announcement from Seedbox.io and Walkerservers
In an announcement posted to its portal on November 6, 2021, seedbox provider Seedbox.io said that due to the recent raids in Denmark, it would no longer allow its customers to seed (share) content on three named private trackers.

“Due to recent events in Denmark on November 3rd we have decided to take our precautions and as a result we have blocked access to the below domains from our servers. The trackers in question are: https://superbits.org, https://danishbytes.org (And all subdomains/alternative domains) [and] https://cynicalgen.org. The sites have been blocked on the network level,” the provider explained.

Walkerservers, which is operated by the same company as Seedbox.io, later confirmed that the same announcement is true for its business too.

Criminal Complaint Was Filed By Rights Alliance
Given that Rights Alliance is behind most if not all pressure in Denmark that can lead to this type of response, TorrentFreak asked the anti-piracy company what it knows about these announcements. As it turns out, it knows quite a lot.

“The Rights Alliance filed a criminal complaint against HNielsen Networks, the Danish company behind Seedbox.io and Walkerservers, in March this year for facilitating copyright infringements by providing seedbox servers pre-installed with software for torrenting and providing customer support for using their services on illegal torrent sites,” explained Ditte Rie Agerskov, Head of Communications at Rights Alliance.

“Seedboxes greatly increase the efficiency of illegal torrent activity. This facilitation is similar in nature to the Filmspeler service that the European Court of Justice has looked at in its case law.”

The Filmspeler case involved Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN and Netherlands-based Filmspeler.nl (Movie Player). The online store sold piracy-configured media players that came with pre-installed add-ons containing hyperlinks to websites from where copyrighted works such as movies, TV shows and live broadcasts were made available without copyright holders’ permission.

Filmspeler lost that fight after the battle went all the way to the European Court of Justice. As a result, the case has been cited in many separate copyright infringement discussions since, sometimes with references to how those devices were marketed and the sellers’ stated aim of allowing customers to access content for free.

Rights Alliance also highlights the existence of criminal precedents in Denmark stating contributory infringement related to “illegal infrastructure.” These include the convictions of men who provided detailed instructions on how to use the piracy app ‘Popcorn Time’.

HNielsen Networks Responds
Speaking with TorrentFreak, Kasper Nielsen of HNielsen Networks acknowledges that an investigation is underway but to comply with legal standards in Denmark, wouldn’t comment on its status. However, he does confirm that he never received any approach from Rights Alliance over alleged wrongdoing. No abuse reports were sent to his hosting providers and, until recently, he had no idea what was going on.

He also insists that Rights Alliance’s claim, that his company provided customers with support to use “illegal torrent sites”, is wrong. Support is only given on how to use the platform his company provides.

“We do not provide that kind of support, in fact we have denied it to clients that have come seeking for it. We provide support for our platform – application-specific issues like programs not responding etc.”

Nielsen also believes that comparing his business with that previously operated by Filmspeler (the case cited by Rights Alliance) is somewhat of a stretch.

“There’s a pretty large difference between the two cases. Filmspeler provided a box that was preconfigured for piracy with addons leading to copyright-protected content but this is not the case on our end. We provide a clean (blank) installation with a set of applications that are in their default settings, there are no links to copyrighted content nor is there any content on the server when you purchase the service,” he says.

“In essence here, I am being investigated as a hosting provider for what my users are using my services for. There’s no encouragement to doing things illegally from our side, that would be up to the end-user and how they want to handle it.”

In respect of responding to reports of abuse, copyright complaints included, HNielsen Networks says that all are responded to and, when required, content is removed from servers. In this case, however, none were sent by the opposing parties.

“Had the Rights Alliance sent in abuse notices for all the cases here then they would have been handled accordingly. There’s a really firm, strict policy inhouse on how these are handled,” Nielsen concludes.

Blocking Decision by Ultra.cc Was “A Smart Move”
Around the same time that WalkerServers and Seedbox.io announced they would block three torrent sites, another provider called Ultra.cc said it would take similar action. In this case, the provider said it would block four unnamed sites to protect its users.

“We would like to inform that we have taken the decision to block 4 websites from our servers. This decision came after the evaluation to protect our clients and their privacy. Our clients is our priority and sometimes we have to take the bold decisions in order to protect them and our business [sic],” the announcement reads.

“Please note that we received no court order or warning this is just a precautionary measure. We at Ultra.cc take privacy, security, and concerns surrounding them very seriously.”

The blocking actions of all three seedbox providers have already been observed by Rights Alliance who say that, while they can’t comment on the ongoing police investigation, they can confirm that users are reporting issues with connecting their seedboxes to several sites. In respect of Ultra.cc, they say that blocking was the correct course of action.

“As our actions during the past year have shown we are targeting all parts of the illegal market from operators to users and illegal infrastructure. So we look at Ultraseedbox’s actions related to the blocking of illegal torrent sites as a smart move that others should follow,” the anti-piracy group concludes.

@Achelous this tracker still open is this become an public tracker

TV piracy is on the rise. New data shared by tracking company MUSO shows that the number of visits to TV piracy sites has increased by 30% compared to last year. While copyright holders are working hard to address the problem, subscription fatigue and hit shows such as Squid Game continue to push demand higher.

There is little doubt that, for many people, streaming services have become the standard for watching TV-shows.

This is no surprise, since subscription-based streaming services are among the best and most convenient alternatives to piracy at this point.

However, the appeal of the streaming model becomes diluted when there are too many ‘Netflixes.’ Most people gladly sign up for one or two streaming services, but more than a handful is a bridge too far for many.

This ‘subscription fatigue’ risk keeps piracy relevant. But does this mean that the traffic to pirate sites is growing as well? According to new data, released by the UK piracy tracking firm MUSO, it is.

TV Piracy is On the Rise

MUSO continuously monitors the number of visits to pirate sites across various categories. According to their data, visits from TV pirates increased significantly during the first three quarters of 2021.

“MUSO has measured over 64.9 billion visits to TV specific piracy websites between January and September 2021 which equates to a 30% increase year on year compared to the same period in 2020,” the company notes.

No Time To Die is releasing on VOD next week, giving fans a chance to see Daniel Craig's final Bond movie at home just a month after it hit theaters.

No Time To Die is releasing on VOD next week, just a month after it debuted exclusively in theaters. Fans of the James Bond franchise waited a long time to see Daniel Craig's final appearance as 007 on the big screen. No Time To Die was delayed multiple times due to COVID-19 as the studios involved with the film looked to find a release date that would best position the film for box office success. Cary Joji Fukunaga's movie eventually landed on an October 2021 release date and proved to be worth the wait as No Time To Die earned very positive reviews.

The great reception of No Time To Die directly translated to the film being one of 2021's biggest box office hits. Although the film disappointed domestically with a $55 million opening weekend, Craig's swan song has been a huge success internationally. The overseas interest helped propel No Time To Die past $600M worldwide in its first month of release. This might not be as big of a haul as Spectre or Skyfall received, but the movie's success is clear in a post-pandemic box office landscape. Still, there were likely plenty of fans who didn't feel comfortable going to a theater yet to see the film and have been waiting for No Time To Die to be made available at home.
 

Perfectly balancing tense drama with charming humor, Finch highlights the best and worst of humanity, and a robot-dog friendship worth remembering.

Post-apocalyptic dramas often make for great and arresting cinema, delving into the concepts of human perseverance, along with the beauty and terror of existence in a world bereft of hope. These notions have been explored with great depth in survival science fiction offerings such as Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, and John Krasinski’s fairly recent installment, A Quiet Place Part II. Tom Hanks is no stranger to helming one-man survival dramas, as he brilliantly embodied the role of Chuck Noland in Robert Zemeckis’ Cast Away, wowing audiences with his profound, showcased performance. Hanks recreates this magic in Miguel Sapochnik’s Finch, set in a post-apocalyptic world wherein survival is an everyday challenge, raising seminal questions about what it truly means to be human. Perfectly balancing tense drama with charming humor, Finch highlights the best and worst of humanity, and a robot-dog friendship worth remembering.

DCEU producer Hiram Garcia confirms that spinoffs to Black Adam are in development and announcements on future projects should be coming soon.

Spinoffs to the upcoming Black Adam could be announced soon, says a producer on the upcoming DCEU film. Dwayne Johnson has been attached to play the role of Black Adam since 2007, and in 2022, after fifteen years, he will finally see the big screen in his own live-action film. The first footage of the film was teased in October at DC FanDome, and the film has a July 2022 release date set.

Black Adam takes place within the larger DCEU, as the character was referenced in 2019's Shazam!. The film is also introducing a variety of comic book favorites into the world including Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan), Atom Smasher (Noah Centineo), Cyclone (Quintessa Swindell), and Isis (Sarah Shahi). With the Justice Society of America set to make their feature film debut in Black Adam, the potential for it to not just be a singular movie but for a larger franchise, appears to be strong.

All major Dutch Internet providers have signed a landmark site-blocking agreement with anti-piracy group BREIN. After a decade-long legal battle over a Pirate Bay blockade, ISPs now agree that if a court orders one provider to block a site, the others will follow suit. BREIN is not wasting any time and has already filed the legal paperwork to target six additional sites.

Over the years copyright holders have tried a multitude of measures to curb copyright infringement, with varying levels of success.

Site blocking has emerged as one of the preferred solutions. While blocking measures are not foolproof, the general idea is that they pose a large enough hurdle for casual pirates to choose legal options instead.

Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN was one of the first organizations to request an ISP blockade. In 2010, it went to court demanding that local ISP Ziggo should block The Pirate Bay. This marked the start of a legal campaign that lasted a full decade.

BREIN eventually succeeded and today The Pirate Bay is blocked, not just by Ziggo, but also by other ISPs who were challenged in a separate lawsuit. The final ruling opened the door to follow-up blockades. We expected these to follow sooner but, in public, BREIN remained quiet on the blocking front.

Landmark Site-Blocking Deal

Today it becomes clear that this delay was for a good reason. Behind the scenes, BREIN worked on an agreement with all large Dutch Internet providers to streamline the blocking process going forward.

The result is a “Website Blocking Covenant” where Ziggo, KPN, DFN, T-Mobile, Canal+, and members of the industry organization NLConnect, promise to block pirate sites when rightsholders obtain a blocking order against one of the other ISPs.

BREIN and the ISPs agreed on a rotation scheme that will target the legal efforts at different ISPs each time. In addition, all parties will cover their own legal fees.

Other costs will be divided as well. For example, the Internet providers will pay for the technical implementation of the blockades. BREIN, for its part, will bear the responsibility and cost for keeping the blocklists accurate and up-to-date.

No Net Neutrality Issues

The landmark agreement was reached with help from the Dutch Government, which took part in the negotiation process. This also involved advice from the Authority for Consumers & Markets (ACM) to ensure that the plan would not violate the local net neutrality regulation.

“This is an important step in tackling online piracy,” says Sander Dekker, the Dutch Minister for Legal Protection, adding that copyrighted content should be “fairly rewarded and not illegally distributed.”

ISPs Prefer No Blocks

NLconnect, which represents a variety of Internet providers, describes the agreement in a more practical manner. Managing Director Mathieu Andriessen notes that ISPs still believe that there are better ways to tackle piracy.

“Illegality must be fought at source, so we maintain fundamental objections to blocking websites,” Andriessen says.

“Nevertheless, we are pleased with the clear agreements in the covenant; when an independent judge orders in a carefully conducted process that an Internet provider must block a certain website, it is efficient for us as providers to follow up on this together.”

BREIN director Tim Kuik is happy with the deal. He says that it will help to limit traffic to sites that continuously evade law enforcement efforts.

“This is an important step in the fight against large-scale piracy. We see sites that persist in their illegal offering and are anonymously hosted with companies that do not comply with summons or otherwise offer the sites ample opportunity to seamlessly continue elsewhere.”

Six New Targets Identified

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Kuik says that BREIN already has an action in the mail to target six additional pirate sites, including their proxies and mirrors. BREIN hopes to have this legal procedure completed before the end of the year.

It is worth noting that the agreement doesn’t prohibit ISPs from fighting blocking requests on their merit. And if an ISP chooses not to put up a defense, others are allowed to take their place.

That said, with all the legal precedents in favor of site blocking, both at the Dutch Supreme Court and the EU Court of Justice, challenging a blocking request isn’t going to be easy.

Following an investigation carried out by Danish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, a man from Denmark has been handed a suspended prison sentence for digital textbook piracy. The case was referred to the State Prosecutor for Serious Economic Crime (SØIK) after the 28-year-old man was given the opportunity to stop his activities but carried on regardless.

Publishers around the world regularly engage in various actions aimed at preventing the unauthorized reproduction and distribution of academic publications and eBooks.

From repeated visits to court to implement site blocking in the UK to lawsuits targeting entities such as Sci-Hub, the approach is sustained, multipronged, and has no fear of tackling smaller players either.

Rights Alliance Investigation

For the past several years, Danish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance has been tracking down individuals said to have profited from the sale of pirated textbooks. These can be controversially expensive items that the majority of students have no choice but to purchase legally. However, there are those who have made cottage industries out of the sale of illegal copies at significantly lower prices.

One such individual, a 28-year-old man from Denmark, was spotted by Rights Alliance selling copies of textbooks via DBA, Denmark’s most popular online marketplace.

According to the anti-piracy group, it first took action to have the listings taken down and then made contact with the man with a request for him to stop his infringing behavior. This had little effect. New profiles were created and the sale of the digital textbooks continued on the same online platform.

Case Referred State Prosecutor for Serious Economic Crime

After collecting evidence of the illegal sales, Rights Alliance made a referral to SØIK, the State Prosecutor for Serious Economic Crime. SØIK is often involved in higher-level prosecutions of pirate site operators but appears to consider smaller players important enough to pursue with criminal cases.

In this matter, the man was said to have offered for sale 51 digital textbooks from different fields of study over a period of more than eight months, without permission from rightsholders. They were sold below the market rate and in some cases at half the original price.

Man Handed Suspended Prison Sentence

According to an announcement from Rights Alliance, the Court in Aalborg has now sentenced the 28-year-old for his crimes.

Based on the sale of 146 pirated digital textbooks, the Court issued a 30 day suspended sentence and ordered the confiscation of a computer and DKK26,544 (US$4,120) in criminal proceeds. In addition, the man is also required to compensate the textbook rightsholders to the tune of DKK35,000 (US$5,450).

Rights Alliance director Maria Fredenslund welcomes both the sentence and the involvement of SØIK in these types of cases.

“It has major consequences for rights holders when their digital books are copied and sold illegally,” Fredenslund says.

“On behalf of both authors and publishers, I am therefore pleased that SØIK is focusing on this type of infringement and that the decision sends a clear signal that the illegal sale of digital textbooks cannot pay off. On the other hand, there is a risk of severe punishment, through confiscation, compensation and a prison sentence.”

One of the books offered for sale was published by Hans Jørgen Biede, associate professor at the Aarhus Business Academy. He says this type of theft is an annoyance and threatens the publication of books in Danish.

“Unfortunately, this is not the first time that I have experienced my books being copied and shared illegally. Even before, the digital editions have been copied and this kind of theft annoys me, because in the worst case it undermines the financial basis for textbooks to be written in Danish in the future,” the professor says.

Latest in a Series of Successful Prosecutions

Rights Alliance has pursued several cases against textbook pirates over recent years. In 2017, three men aged between 26 and 71-years-old received conditional jail sentences of four months for selling online access to around 198 textbooks without permission via the LendStudy website, the domain of which was confiscated.

In 2019, a 26-year-old man was handed a 20-day suspended prison sentence and fined around US$4,000 for similar offenses and in 2020, a woman who sold access to pirated copies of academic textbooks stored on Dropbox received a similar punishment.

More recently, a former student who sold pirated digital copies of textbooks was handed 20 days probation and a confiscation order after pleading guilty to selling copies of 38 different textbooks between January 2018 and April 2020.

@jacko2021 I applying for back-ups.me

welcome to invitehawk brother 

welcome to invitehawk brother 

welcome to invitehawk brother 

welcome to invitehawk brother