BitTorrent Inc, the company behind the successful uTorrent and BitTorrent file-sharing clients, has been making huge efforts in recent times to shed the false image that the company is synonymous with online piracy.

One of the key ways it’s changing this perception is by partnering with well-known artists such as De La Soul, Moby and Madonna, and showing that BitTorrent is an ideal tool to connect artists with fans.

To provide some examples of what it can do, BitTorrent Inc. has made a distribution and advertising deck with success stories. Thus far more than 10,000 artists have used BitTorrent’s bundles, generating over 100 million downloads which convert into real sales.

Slide from BitTorrent’s advertising deck (via Digiday)

Aside from listing its successes the company also reports some intriguing statistics on the consumer behavior of its community.

On slide 12 BitTorrent Inc. notes that its community is 33% more likely to buy albums online, makes 34% more DVD purchases, watches 34% more movies in theater and is twice as likely to have a paid music subscription.

BitTorrent’s community

Because BitTorrent Inc provides no source for the data provided in this last slide we contacted the company last week to find out more. Unfortunately, we haven’t received a response thus far.

However, while writing this article we found that the numbers reported in the pitch deck trace back to one of our own articles. The data reported by BitTorrent Inc. comes from music industry group IFPI and details the buying habits of music pirates. BitTorrent Inc subsequently used these piracy statistics to sell its “community” to potential partners.

This is interesting for a variety of reasons. First, IFPI’s research doesn’t mention BitTorrent users, but file-sharing music pirates in general. Furthermore, since when does BitTorrent see “music pirates” as its community? Perhaps that’s the reason why the source for the data isn’t provided in the pitch deck (IFPI was mentioned as source in an earlier pitch deck).

That said, BitTorrent Inc is right to point out that file-sharers tend to be more engaged fans than the average person. Even the RIAA was willing to admit that.

It’s good to see that more and more artists, including many big names, are beginning to recognize this potential too. Even U2, whose former manager is one of the most vocal anti-piracy crusaders, has now decided to give away its latest album for free hoping that it will increase sales of older work. Without piracy, that would have never happened.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The hacking trial of Gottfrid Warg and his alleged 21-year-old Danish accomplice continued this week in Copenhagen, Denmark. While the Pirate Bay founder answered questions during week one, this Wednesday marked the first day the 21-year-old answered questions.

The man, whose identity is being protected, told the Court that while he’s had no formal IT training, he is indeed a computer security expert who had been involved in testing computer systems to see how they hold up to external threats. He admitted working for American, Australian and Danish companies.

The 21-year-old Dane refused to say whether he knows Gottfrid on the grounds that he could be attacked in prison. He did admit to having previously heard about Gottfrid, however.

“Most people in the IT sector have heard of him,” he said.

The Dane also admitted to traveling to Cambodia to visit friends and smoke cannabis, but denied that he went there to meet Gottfrid at his apartment.

The prosecution also presented some emails in which the man said that CSC, the IT company involved in the hack, was owned by the CIA, but he dismissed that comment as a joke.

Discussion also returned to the IRC conversations referenced in the first week of the trial which reportedly took place between ‘My Evil Twin’ (allegedly Gottfrid) and ‘Advanced Persistent Terrorist Threat’ (allegedly the 21-year-old).

Much was made in week one of potentially altered Internet Relay Chat (IRC) logs presented by the prosecution. This week the Dane admitted that he had been involved in some conversations and had actually met ‘My Evil Twin’. That person was not Gottfrid, he said.

In respect of the content of some chats, the Dane said the topic had indeed centered around the security of IT systems but he insisted that there we no plans to hack CSC or any other companies’ computers. Usernames and passwords of CSC systems that were allegedly exchanged during the IRC chats had been found using Google, he added.

Also of note during the day’s proceedings was the Dane’s continued refusal to provide police with encryption keys to examine the contents of his laptop.

“There is no material on my computer. I can not see how it would make this a better situation,” he told the court.

However, DR.dk reported that during the day, due to the nature of the evidence being presented, it became clear that police had managed to retrieve some information without access to the keys.

After a day’s break in proceedings, on Friday renowned activist and security expert Jacob Appelbaum appeared as an expert witness for the defense. Appelbaum also appeared in Gottfrid’s Swedish trial, a case in which he was partly acquitted.

The prosecution previously complained that Appelbaum knows Gottfrid personally, so was unsuitable as an expert witness. The American denied that was the case.

“I’ve only talked a little with Gottfrid as he is not known as a sociable guy. He is not easy to approach and the times that I’ve seen him in social situations it has always been about computer security,” Appelbaum said.

Echoing his testimony in the Swedish case, Appelbaum told the Court that it certainly would have been possible for outsiders to have controlled Gottfrid’s computer to carry out the hack of CSC.

It’s unclear for how long the trial will continue but hearings have been allocated until the end of October.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

According to fans around the world, MMA is the fastest growing sport, bar none. The planet’s premier MMA production company is the Ultimate Fighting Championship, more often known as simply UFC.

In addition to events broadcast on regular TV, each month the UFC puts on special PPV cards. These cards attract a lot of attention and are a major money spinner for the martial arts organization. However, there are thousands of fans out there who prefer not to pay to view. For them, torrent sites are the answer.

Until the first few months of this year one of the most prolific releasers of UFC content was an individual known online as Secludedly. However, during April his activities came to an abrupt halt after he was targeted in a $32 million lawsuit filed by UFC parent company, Zuffa.

Secludedly was soon revealed to be Steven A. Messina, a 27-year-old from Staten Island, New York.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t understand the laws and all that around this type of thing, so I’m a little lost here and overwhelmed,” Messina told TorrentFreak at the time. “I don’t even know what is going on. I think people on the Internet know more than me.”

With a default judgment looming TorrentFreak further interviewed Messina who told us that he’d decided to launch a funding campaign to defend himself against Zuffa. He raised a few hundred dollars, nowhere near enough to take on the multi-billion valued company.

Then the inevitable happened. On June 4, 2014, a default judgment was entered against Messina and his fight with the UFC was over. The question now was how badly they’d choose to beat him up financially after the final bell.

All went quiet until early September when Zuffa filed for a permanent injunction to stop Messina pirating UFC content in the future. Behind the scenes the UFC and their arch-enemy had settled their case, with the only public record being the injunction jointly signed by the martial arts organization and Messina.

As can be seen from the excerpt from the injunction below, the UFC are keen to learn from Messina’s operation, and that means collecting all data they can from the New Yorker.

“This Court hereby enters an injunction requiring Defendant, Steven A Messina, to turn over to the plaintiff, Zuffa..[..].. any readily available information, processes, records accounts, bills received for the purchase of any UFC event, user profile names and identifications, domains utilized by Defendant and any user information for any website or computer used by, owned or controlled by Defendant that was used or assisted in the unauthorized access, streaming, copyright, uploading, downloading, distributing or public performance of any UFC event, including, but not limited to, the events that are the subject of the instant litigation,” the injunction reads.

Also of interest to Zuffa is the equipment used by Messina to pirate their content. The injunction cites a 2013 TorrentFreak article in which Messina explained how he captured super-smooth video. All equipment related to that must be surrendered to Zuffa including various pieces of software, scripts and storage devices.

In addition to restraining Messina from future piracy acts, the UFC are also allowed to check up on him to ensure compliance.

“Plaintiff shall be entitled to conduct all discovery permitted under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for the period of six (6) months from the date of the filing of this stipulation for the purpose of monitoring Defendant’s compliance with the terms of this permanent injunction,” the injunction reads.

There is no mention of a cash settlement and even if there was one it wouldn’t amount to much, certainly not $32 million. However, to act as a deterrent, the UFC has had Messina come out in public to both apologize and warn others away from the perils of piracy.

“I apologize to the UFC for any damages incurred as a result of my actions in illegally distributing copyrighted UFC broadcasts. As a result of my confession for piracy of UFC’s protected content, I fully accept the terms of the settlement with the UFC,” Messina said.

“I now realize the harm caused by my actions. It is my hope that I can use this difficult period as a learning experience as I move on with my life. I would also like to tell anyone pirating UFC broadcasts, either through illegal downloading or non-authorized streaming, that it is illegal and not worth the risk.”

Kirk Hendrick, UFC’s Chief Legal Officer, said the MMA organization was satisfied with the result.

“The UFC organization is pleased with the outcome of this case and Messina’s willingness to assist the UFC’s efforts in protecting our intellectual property and broadcasts. With Messina’s apology and understanding, the UFC organization will learn more to help us continue uncovering illegal distribution of our content.”

But while Messina may have been brought under control, the lawsuit against him has done nothing to stop content appearing online. Following last weekend’s Jacare vs Mousasi card, no less than five separate release groups uploaded the event online.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

There’s a good case to argue that the UK’s Federation Against Copyright (FACT) Theft is the most aggressive anti-piracy group operating in the West today.

While the MPAA softens its approach and becomes friendly on its home turf, FACT – a unit funded by Hollywood – is acting as a proxy overseas in the United Kingdom.

Later this year FACT will take another private prosecution to a criminal court in the UK. According to a press release issued yesterday, five men will face charges that they coordinated to action the unauthorized online distribution of recently released films.

Other than noting that the men were arrested in 2013, FACT provided no other details and due to legal reasons declined further comment. However, TorrentFreak has been able to confirm the following.

Following an investigation into the “sourcing and supply” of pirated films on the Internet, February last year FACT and police from the economic crime unit targeted four addresses in the West Midlands.

Image from the raid

Four men, then aged 20, 22, 23 and 31, were arrested on suspicion of offenses committed under the Copyright Act, but exactly who they were was never made public.

However, TF discovered that the men were members of a pair of P2P movie release groups known as 26K and RemixHD, a former admin of UnleashTheNet (the site run by busted US-based release group IMAGiNE) and an individual from torrent site The Resistance.

The image below shows the final movie releases of RemixHD, the last taking place on January 29, 2013. The raids took place on February 1, 2013.

FACT now report that five men, one more than originally reported, will face charges at Wolverhampton Crown Court later this year. While men from the two release groups are set to appear, it is unclear whether the former torrent site admins are still in the frame, although it is possible that FACT are referring to them collectively as a release group.

Aside from the fact that this will be the first time that a release group case has ever gone to court in the UK, the case is notable in two other respects.

Firstly, FACT – not the police – are prosecuting the case. Second, nowhere does FACT mention that the five will face charges of copyright infringement – it appears that the main charge now is conspiracy to defraud.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Nearly two weeks have passed since hundreds of photos of naked celebrities leaked online. This “fappening” triggered a massive takedown operation targeting sites that host and link to the images, Google included.

A few days ago Google received a request to remove links to Kate Upton’s stolen photos The request was not sent by Upton but by her boyfriend Jason Verlander, who also appears in a few of the leaked images.

The notice includes hundreds of URLs of sites such as thefappening.eu where the photos are hosted without permission.

It’s quite unusual for Google’s takedown team to be confronted with a long link of naked celebrity pictures. This may explain why it took a while before a decision was reached on the copyright-infringing status of the URLs, a process that may involve a cumbersome manual review.

Yesterday the first batch was processed and interestingly enough Google decided to leave nearly half of all URLs untouched. The overview below shows that with 16 of the 444 links processed, only 45% were removed.

The big question is, of course, why?

Verlander’s takedown request

Google doesn’t explain its decision keep the links in question in its search results. In some cases the original content had already been removed at the source site, so these URLs didn’t have to be removed.

Other rejections are more mysterious though. For example, the thefappening.eu URLs that remain online all pointed to stolen images when we checked. Most of these were not nudes, but they certainly weren’t posted with permission.

One possible explanation for Google’s inaction is that Verlander most likely claimed to own the copyright on the images, something he can only do with pictures he took himself. With Upton’s selfies this is hard to do, unless she signed away her rights.

While browsing through the reported URLs we also noticed another trend. Some sites have replaced Upton’s leaked photos with photos of other random naked women. Google’s takedown team apparently has a sharp eye because these were not removed by Google either.

Chilling Effects, who host Google’s takedown requests, just posted a redacted version of the original notice with Upton’s name removed. Unfortunately this doesn’t offer more clues to resolve this takedown mystery, so for now we can only guess why many of the links remain indexed.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.