Over the past year City of London Police have been working together with the music and movie industries to tackle sites that provide unauthorized access to copyrighted content.

The police started by sending warning letters to site owners, asking them to go legit or shut down. Late last year this was followed by a campaign targeted at domain registrars, asking them to suspend the domain names of several so-called pirate sites.

Two weeks ago police began the latest initiative in “Operation Creative,” a partnership with online advertising companies to replace ads on suspected pirate sites with police banners. The banners in question inform users that the site they’re browsing has been reported to the authorities.

Police banner

Until now little was known about the scope of the anti-piracy initiative, but a Freedom of Information (FOI) request TorrentFreak sent to the police reveals some additional details.

In total, 74 domain names are being targeted by the advertisement hijacking effort. All of these domains have been reported to the police by copyright holder groups. Unfortunately, however, our request to get a full list of the affected domains was rejected.

While the police recognize that the public has a legitimate interest in knowing which sites are being targeted, it believes that the possible negative consequences of the disclosure weigh stronger. They fear that the list of domains could prove useful to pirates and increase traffic to the sites in question.

“This is an ongoing investigation and disclosure to the public domain would raise the profile of those sites unlawfully providing copyright material. This would enable individuals to visit the sites highlighted and unlawfully download copyright material and increase the scale of the loss,” City of London Police inform us.

The FOI request further reveals that 83 advertising companies are currently participating in the effort to target ads on pirate sites. All these companies are UK-based or have a UK office, but many are multinationals and have a presence in the US and elsewhere too.

As with the domain names, the police also refused to share the names of their advertising company partners. The police fear that publishing the names of the companies could result in cyber-attacks.

“In the case of advertisers, public identification would increase the risk of harm to them by way of cyber attack or other means,” TorrentFreak was told.

A FOI request TorrentFreak sent previously also revealed more details on the other “Operation Creative” efforts. It showed that City of London Police has warned 107 websites since its launch last year, and sent out suspension requests for 75 domain names.

The domain name suspension efforts were not particularly effective as only five of these were granted. The other 70 requests were denied by domain registrars.

Whether the ad hijacking campaign will have much effect is doubtful too. Thus far there haven’t been any reports from users who have spotted these warning banners in the wild.

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

Last month the file-sharing leak phenomenon hit the upcoming season of Doctor Who.

Following a catastrophic error at a BBC office in Miami, not only were the new seasons’ scripts made available to the public, but several episodes too.

It’s unclear how many people downloaded the videos directly from the server, but it soon became clear that episode one had leaked when it appeared on The Pirate Bay and other file-sharing sites. It was an unfinished ‘workprint’ release, destined for Marcelo Camargo of Marc Drei Productions, a Brazil-based production company known for its subtitling work.

The image below shows how the content appeared on the BBC website.

Soon after rumors turned to a potential leak of episode two. A torrent was certainly uploaded to The Pirate Bay, but whoever seeded that file in the first instance quickly backed away, leaving the torrent at just a few percent complete. This led many to presume that the release was a fake, but that wasn’t to be the case. A full copy was definitely waiting somewhere.

On Sunday at least one torrent sprang back to life temporarily, surprising people who had patiently left it in their client to complete. While it reportedly went quiet again, another torrent appeared claiming to be of the same material. As both torrents completed confirmation arrived that the leak, which had lay dormant for several weeks, was indeed real.

Weighing in just short of 987MB, the episode is called ‘Into the Dalek’ and once again it is another unfinished ‘workprint’ copy, as the screenshot below shows.

In addition to being covered in text watermarks, the episode is presented in black and white, with many special effects absent. Its naming convention matches the screenshot above, suggesting that this leak was also obtained from the BBC website.

While the BBC will be disappointed not to have contained this second episode, there are currently no signs that any of the remaining episodes have leaked to file-sharing networks.

The leak is only the latest in a long line of workprint copies of movies and TV shows to be made available online. It certainly won’t be the last.

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

When Immunicity launched last year TorrentFreak spoke with the owner, who told us he created the service as a protest against increasing censorship efforts in the UK.

“We are angered by the censorship that is happening in the UK and in other countries across the globe, so we got our thinking caps on and decided to do something about it,” Immunicity’s operator said.

The site’s core motivation came from the famous John Gilmore quote that was prominently placed on the site’s homepage. “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” And that was exactly what the service offered.

Those who set up their browser to work with Immunicity would gain access to blocked sites, by running their traffic through its proxy server. In just a few clicks the service was able to unblock any censored site, hassle free.

For more than a year Immunicity helped tens of thousands of people to unblock censored websites, but that was brought to an end last week. Tipped off by copyright holders, City of London Police labeled Immunicity a criminal operation and arrested its 20-year old owner.

The idea behind the police action was to send a deterrent message and make it harder for the public to access blocked sites. However, it appears to have resulted in just the opposite.

Just days after the original Immunicity site was taken offline at least two clones have appeared. Both Immunicity.co.uk and Immun.es offer the same unblocking functionality, completely free of charge.

The two new services are a direct result of the Immunicity takedown, once again showing that censorship enforcement may lead to counterproductive results. TorrentFreak spoke with the operator of Immum.es who, considering recent events, has taken the necessary precautions to stay out of police sight.

“When purchasing the domain and server I made steps to protect myself from potential adversaries,” the operator says.

Immun.es uses a hosting service that allows proxies and has unmetered bandwidth, which should guarantee smooth sailing in the short run. The operator informs us that the backend is coded in node.js, which he may release as open source later.

The end result is that the actions of City of London Police have made matters worse, from their own perspective. Instead of one Immunicity, there are now two, and possible many more to come in the future.

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

As the discussions over online piracy heat up in Australia, there’s an interesting situation developing which provides insight into why agreement on the topic has been so difficult to reach.

Not only has the chasm between some of the key ISPs and rightsholders remained large, but even those expected to be on the same page have been showing signs of division. The two key government ministers in the debate, Malcolm Turnbull and George Brandis, last week contradicted each other over who should pick up the tab for any online piracy scheme.

Brandis balked at the idea of ISPs being “innocent bystanders” in respect of piracy, instead insisting that their role in infringement must lead to them financially supporting rightsholders. Turnball, on the other hand, said that he didn’t find that a “persuasive argument.”

But if Turnbull thought he was only at odds with Brandis, he’s now been shown as out of touch when it comes to rightsholders. The minister recently said that if rightsholders want to send a message that they’re serious over piracy, they need to strategically sue a few people – “moms and dads and students”.

As expected the comments weren’t well received by the public, but now the very people Turnbull said should take action have dismissed the idea as unworkable.

Speaking with Fairfax Media, Village Roadshow chief Graham Burke said that suing people only makes lawyers rich, but above all it simply doesn’t work.

“We don’t want to sue 16-year-olds or mums and dads. It takes 18 months to go through the courts and all that does is make lawyers rich and clog the court system. It’s not effective,” Burke said.

Village Roadshow famously dragged local ISP iiNet through the courts for many years over the issue of service provider liability. They not only lost that case, but also sparked a rift between rightsholders and iiNet that continues today, often being played out in public.

Still, at some point all sides will have to come to the table. Despite the disputes, Burke and Turnbull are on the same page when it comes to ISPs being involved in an educational program to deter would-be pirates, and punish them if necessary. Both believe that Australia needs a three-strikes style system to deter online infringement, ending in Internet throttling for the most persistent infringers.

However, if current indications are anything to go by, there is a lot of work still to be done before all parties are on the same page. Whether consensus will be reached voluntarily of by force remains to be seen.

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

This week we have two newcomers in our chart.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the most downloaded movie this week.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(2)	Captain America: The Winter Soldier	8.1 / trailer
2	(1)	Divergent	7.2 / trailer
3	(5)	The Amazing Spider-Man 2	7.4 / trailer
4	(7)	22 Jump Street (TS)	7.8 / trailer
5	(4)	Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (TS)	8.3 / trailer
6	(3)	The Expendables 3 (DVDscr)	?.? / trailer
7	(…)	Hercules (CAM)	6.5 / trailer
8	(…)	Guardians Of The Galaxy (HDCAM)	8.8 / trailer
9	(6)	The Other Woman	6.5 / trailer
10	(8)	Need For Speed	7.1 / trailer

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