Earlier this week City of London Police arrested the alleged operator of a range of proxy sites. The action was framed as a success but new information obtained by TorrentFreak shows that other police anti-piracy efforts are far less effective.

“Operation Creative” began with the sending of 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 “illegal” sites.

“If a website fails to comply and engage with the police, then a variety of other tactical options may be used including; contacting the domain registrar informing them of the criminality and seeking suspension of the site,” the City of London Police told TorrentFreak.

To find out more about the scope of this operation, back in June TorrentFreak sent a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the police which provided new insights into the effectiveness of this process.

Following its launch in the last quarter of 2013, City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) sent warning letters to the operators of 107 ‘pirate’ sites. All of these sites were referred by entertainment industry groups, and include most of the popular file-sharing domains.

Interestingly, the FOI data further reveals that 109 domain names were referred to PIPCU in total, which means that the police didn’t take any action against two of the reported sites. There are no additional details explaining why these sites were not considered to be infringing.

In addition to contacting site owners directly, PIPCU also approached domain name registrars with requests to suspend these pirate sites. In total the police sent out suspension requests for 75 domain names, and only five of these were granted. The other 70 requests were denied.

This relatively low success rate of less than 7% shows that domain registrars are not easily convinced to suspend accounts without a court order. The only registrar that we know of who did comply was PDR Ltd (Public Domain Registry), who seized ExtraTorrent’s domain name and several others.

PIPCU letter to registrars

At the other end of the spectrum is EasyDNS. The registrar refused to suspend any domains without due process, and helped to transfer several suspended domains away from PDR by launching an appeal at ICANN.

EasyDNS CEO Mark Jeftovic is happy to hear that other registrars also denied the PIPCU requests. While he believes that registrars and other Internet services have an obligation to prevent acute threats to the network, which may require domain suspensions, this is not the case with alleged pirate sites that haven’t been found guilty by a court of law.

“When somebody identifying themselves as law enforcement, directs registrars to takedown functioning websites or even hijack their traffic in the absence of some legal due process, then we are in the early stages of living in a world of ‘rule by decree’,” Jeftovic tells TorrentFreak.

EasyDNS’ CEO believes that in a time where governments and law enforcement agencies are illegally monitoring their own citizens to make sure that they obey the law, the public has the right to question authority.

“In a world where our governments are quickly losing their legitimacy to rule, we, as citizens and private enterprises now have to put the onus on governments and their enforcement agencies at every turn: prove what you’re doing is legal, or leave me alone. That’s what ‘due process’ is all about,” Jeftovic says.

In the case of PIPCU’s domain suspensions, nearly all registrars did indeed question the legitimacy of the request. While PIPCU has the right to request action from a registrar, its letter carries no more weight than one from the average man in the street.

That said, thus far there are no signs that PIPCU is backing down. Operation Creative is still in full force and last week they began hijacking the first ad banners. As it turns out, advertising companies are easier to convince than domain name registrars.

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

Unless BitTorrent users are taking steps to hide their identities through the use of a VPN, proxy, or seedbox, their downloading habits are available for almost anyone to snoop on.

By design the BitTorrent protocol shares the location of any user in the swarm. After all, without knowing where to send the data nothing can be shared to begin with.

Despite this fairly common knowledge, even some experienced BitTorrent users can be shocked to learn that someone has been monitoring their activities, let alone that their sharing activity is being made public for the rest of the world to see.

Like it or not, this is exactly what the newly launched torrent search engine BTindex is doing.

Unlike most popular torrent sites BTindex adds new content by crawling BitTorrent’s DHT network. This is already quite unique as most other sites get their content from user uploads or other sites. However, the most controversial part without doubt is that the IP-addresses of BitTorrent users are being shared as well.

People who download a file from The Pirate Bay or any other torrent site expose their IP-addresses via the DHT network. BTindex records this information alongside the torrent metadata. The number of peers are displayed in the search results and for each file a selection of IP-addresses is made available to the public.

The image below shows a selection of peers who shared a pirated copy of the movie “Transcendence,” this week’s most downloaded film.

Some IP-addresses sharing “Transcendence.”

Perhaps even more worrying to some, the site also gives an overview of all recorded downloads per IP-address. While the database is not exhaustive there is plenty of dirt to be found on heavy BitTorrent users who have DHT enabled in their clients.

Below is an example of the files that were shared via the IP-address of a popular VPN provider.

Files shared by the IP-address of a popular VPN provider

Since all data is collected through the DHT network people can avoid being tracked by disabling this feature in their BitTorrent clients. Unfortunately, that only gives a false sense of security as there are plenty of other monitoring firms who track people by gathering IP-addresses directly from the trackers.

The idea to index and expose IP-addresses of public BitTorrent users is not entirely new. In 2011 YouHaveDownloaded did something similar. This site generated considerable interest but was shut down a few months after its launch.

If anything, these sites should act as a wake up call to people who regularly share files via BitTorrent without countermeasures. Depending on the type of files being shared, a mention on BTindex is probably the least of their worries.

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

Popcorn Time was embraced by millions following its debut earlier this year, but what if there was a similar looking service providing additional features but with a small monthly price tag?

Visually, TVShowTime is clean and tidy. It allows the tracking of TV shows and provides associated content on top of community and social networking features. It’s easy to use – click a series from the 40,000 in its databases and one can quickly begin tracking – and watching.

After adding a show – we chose Game of Thrones – TVShow Time gave us a link to buy the first season on DVD from Amazon. Links also appeared to download the subtitles in a convenient zip file.

Simultaneously a big ‘play’ button marked “watch episode” sat invitingly in the middle of the screen. With a click a new page appeared.

As can be seen from the screenshot, TVShow Time provides two options. The first is a free service offering calender and subtitling downloads, plus links to buy the shows from official online sources including Netflix and iTunes.

The second allows the viewer to sign up to a $7.99 a month subscription with torrent downloading service Put.io (TVShow Time is free). When this external account with Put.io is integrated with TVShow Time, users can access all their TV shows from BitTorrent networks in both 480p and 720p, and collect the resulting episodes from Put.io via HTTP download. Unlike standard Popcorn Time downloads, these are impossible for anti-piracy companies to monitor.

The image below shows the first three already-filled-in torrent sources for Game of Thrones as directed by TVShow Time (Put.io remains a “dumb” service and only takes instruction from users).

So, what we have here, at least on the surface, is a Popcorn Time-style interface on steroids with a small price tag attached for downloads. However, while Popcorn Time is being developed pretty much for free and is visible on the radar of the MPAA, TVShow Time sits very much at the opposite end of the financial spectrum.

According to reports 1, 2, TVShow Time, which operates more or less like many other streaming or torrent-like indexes (with social networking features attached), is sitting on a $500,000 investment. (see update below)

The people who put up the money are hardly lightweights either. They include Jean-David Blanc (Allociné), Deezer founder Daniel Marhely, and telecoms giant Xavier Niel, said to be worth in excess of $8 billion.

The situation provides an interesting contrast.

While the hobbyists behind the several Popcorn Time forks find themselves in the crosshairs of the MPAA, and amateur Swedish subtitlers get raided by the police, a company with serious investment can somehow offer similar functionality without incurring the wrath of the studios.

But when potential rivals have this much influence, it’s probably easier to turn the other way – at least for now.

Update: This article has been updated to correct an error – TVShow Time’s Antonio Pinto confirms investment last year amounted to “less than $500,000.”

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

Earlier today news broke that the proxy service Immunicity had been taken offline by the UK Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU). Several reverse proxies offering access to blocked sites such as The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents suffered the same fate.

Initially it appeared that the domain seizures were the result of a request PIPCU sent to the domain registrar, as happened previously with other ‘pirate’ domains. However, as more information came in this case turned out to be different.

City of London Police inform TorrentFreak that they actually arrested the alleged owner of the domain names. The 20-year-old man from Nottingham was interviewed at a local police station and later released on bail.

Pending further investigation he agreed to voluntarily transfer the domains to the police.

This is the second arrest since the start of “Operation Creative” last year – the first involved the alleged admin of sports streaming site BoxingGuru. As is often the case, the police were assisted by Hollywood-backed anti-piracy group FACT.

According to Chief Inspector Andy Fyfe, the arrest is a prime example of a successful partnership between the copyright industry and local law enforcement.

“This week’s operation highlights how PIPCU, working in partnership with the creative and advertising industries is targeting every aspect of how copyrighting material is illegally being made available to internet users,” Fyfe says.

“We will come down hard on people believed to be committing or deliberately facilitating such offences,” he adds.

While the arrest is being framed as a major success, none of the domains operated by the man were offering a file-sharing or illegal streaming service. They were merely proxies that allowed Internet users to access The Pirate Bay and other sites that were blocked per court order by some (not all) UK Internet providers. Many UK ISPs still routinely offer access to the very same sites on a daily basis.

Commenting on the arrest, FACT Director Kieron Sharp argues that these proxy sites and services are just as illegal as the blocked sites themselves.

“Internet users have sought ways to continue to access the sites by getting round the blocking put in place by the ISPs. One of the ways to do this is to use proxy servers. This operation is a major step in tackling those providing such services,” Sharp notes.

Whether this argument will hold up in court has yet to be seen. That is, if the case ever goes to court. Unlike the blocked pirate sites the proxies didn’t appear to be operating for profit, but as a hobby project instead.

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

It’s pretty obvious that Lexi Alexander isn’t scared of rocking the boat. In an unprecedented move last month, the movie director was pictured holding up a sign calling for the release of Peter Sunde, an individual not exactly the movie industry’s most-loved man.

But Alexander is no ordinary person or director. Instead of towing the usual line by decrying piracy as a scourge, the 39-year-old recently noted that several studies have found that piracy has actually benefited movie profits. For a movie worker this is a controversial stance to take, but rather than back off, Alexander only seems motivated to continue her abrasive approach.

In new comments Alexander takes aim at Hollywood, this time referencing the recent leak of The Expendables 3. She doesn’t condone the leak, but instead looks at possible reasons why it ended up online.

“The piracy issue makes me want to tear my hair out at times. I do not understand how so many of my filmmaker colleagues have bought into this MPAA propaganda. Recently these think tanks and organizations have popped up which are not officially associated with the MPAA, but definitely on their payroll,” Alexander begins.

“But okay, you want to be mad at the kid in Sweden or Australia for uploading your movie? Go for it. Oh wait, in cases like Expendables 3 it’s actually someone here in Hollywood leaking it,” she notes.

The idea that The Expendables 3 leaked directly from Hollywood is not new. Pristine copies like these simply aren’t available on the streets unless an insider has had a hand in it somehow, whether that interaction was intentional or otherwise.

In some instances the motivation to leak, Alexander suggests, could be borne out of a desire to get even. Assistants to the higher-ups are often treated badly, so more consideration should be given to what they might do in return, the director notes.

“It’s kind of like going to a restaurant and thinking twice about insulting the waiter or busboy because you’re afraid of what they’ll put in the food before they bring it back,” Alexander explains.

“Imagine those famously abusive directors, producers or stars (#notall….) having to tone down the abuse, otherwise LOUD EVENT MOVIE # 5 will show up on The Pirate Bay with a little note that says: ‘Don’t bother seeing this in the theater. Everybody above the line was a monster to us’.”

The thought that leaks might happen as a type of personal revenge is in itself the stuff of a Hollywood plot. However, just as it’s unlikely that a story about a movie leak would ever make the silver screen, Hollywood insiders involved in them also tend to escape criticism.

In fact, history shows us that the *actual* leakers, whether that’s an assistant with a grudge or otherwise, are rarely – if ever – paraded around in public as criminals. That honor is usually reserved for the first uploaders and/or their ‘pirate’ allies. Still, Alexander feels it would be wise to keep those close to home in a good frame of mind.

“Maybe the MPAA should drop some of their $$ on PSAs about the danger of abusing assistants: ‘If you kick me everyday, your film will land on Pirate Bay’,” she warns.

Finally, in a move likely to further annoy the Hollywood brass, Alexander presents a “hypothetical” mechanism through which abused assistants could beat the bullies.

“I’m not suggesting anything, but hypothetically, if there were an anonymous address people could send not-yet-released movie DVDs to, so someone else could upload them without a chance of it being backtracked to the source, then a whole bunch of abused and mistreated assistants wouldn’t be defenseless anymore,” she concludes.

Due to the hugely controversial nature of her comments its difficult to judge how serious Alexander is with her suggestions. But, whatever the case, it’s safe to say that she’s one of a kind and likely to continue rocking the boat in future.

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