Since last year City of London Police have been working together with copyright holders to topple sites that provide or link to pirated 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 “illegal” sites.

Yesterday police started out another round of anti-piracy actions targeted at sites that offer access to pirated content.

Among the new targets is Immunicity, a general proxy server that was set up as a censorship circumvention tool.

The police action against Immunicity is concerning as the service merely allows users to route their traffic through a proxy network, much like other anonimizing services such as TOR and VPNs do. The service itself doesn’t host or link to infringing content.

In addition in Immunicity the Pirate Bay proxy Piratereverse.info and KickassTorrents proxies Kickassunblock.info and Katunblock.com were taken down as well. The same happened with movie2kproxy.com, h33tunblock.info and several other sites. The DNS entries of the domains have all been replaced and now point at a PIPCU IP-address which displays a warning banner.

PIPCU has not yet confirmed the nature of the takedowns but at the time of writing the most likely explanation is that the U.S. based registrar suspended the sites in question.

Based on letters that were sent out to registrars previously, the police accuse proxy services and sites of running a criminal operation. While no court order has been obtained, PIPCU claims to have launched an investigation into the sites and has asked the domain registrar to cooperate.

“The owners of the aforementioned domains are suspected to be involved in the criminal distribution of copyrighted material either directly or indirectly and are liable to prosecution under UK law for the following offences: Conspiracy to Defraud, Offences under the Fraud Act 2006, Copyright, Design & Patents Act 1988,” PIPCU states.

“Should a conviction be brought for the above offences, UK courts may impose sentences of imprisonment and/or fines. PIPCU has criminal and civil powers in UK law to seize money, belongings and any property in connection with these offences.”

It’s important to note that with the previous requests the City of London Police did not present a court order or other warrant. However, it turns out that police letterhead is sometimes enough to throw due process concerns overboard.

TorrentFreak has asked PIPCU for a comment on the most recent actions, but we have yet to hear back.

Update: TorrentFreak has received new information suggesting that PIPCU managed to take control of the domains without the involvement of eNom. We will present more details when we are allowed to share it in public.

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

Perfect 10 are no strangers to lawsuits. From 2005 to the present day they have sued several huge companies for either allegedly using their images without permission or somehow being connected to infringements.

Notable among them are Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Giganews, Megaupload, Depositfiles Mastercard, Visa and Leaseweb. While Perfect 10 lacks a clear victory, it has achieved several settlements which has motivated the company to continue its legal crusade.

Late last week the publisher moved on to its next target, hosting company OVH. In their complaint Perfect 10 accuses the French company of providing hosting services to several websites that store pirated copies of their images.

“Defendants host and provide Internet connectivity and other essential services to websites, including infringing websites operated in California that have infringed tens of thousands of Perfect 10 Copyrighted Works,” the complaint states.

According to Perfect 10, OVH currently hosts over a dozen websites which store their work without permission, including celeb.to, celebforum.to, daily-ladies.com, gallery-dump.com, erooups.com, gophoto.us, hatuncenter.net, imagechunk.com, sualize.us, imgmaster.net, imagerise.com, ohfree.net, pixhost.eu and redblow.com.

The magazine publisher argues that OVH is directly responsible for these copyright infringements committed by its customers. The company says it sent 17 DMCA notices to OVH since 2011, identifying more than 12,000 infringing images, and believes the hosting provider should have taken the URLs in question offline.

“Defendants could have and should have ended the infringement by processing Perfect 10’s DMCA notices and removing the infringing images or by refusing to host the identified allegedly infringing websites, among other things,” the complaint explains.

“Defendants have failed to take such action and have failed to remove the infringing material that Perfect 10 has identified in its DMCA notices. Defendants’ conduct has caused, and continues to cause, severe and irreparable harm to Perfect 10,” they add.

The allegation doesn’t come as a surprise as hosting providers generally don’t take action based on DMCA takedown notices. Instead, they forward them to their clients, who are then responsible for resolving the issue. However, it appears that Perfect 10 wants to challenge this safe harbor principle.

Interestingly, OVH’s hosting services are not the only problem. In addition to the pirate sites, the company is also accused of passing on copyright-infringing Internet traffic of Google and other third-party sites through its American backbone.

“Third-party websites located in the United States, including Google.com, msn.com, yahoo.com, and blekko.com, among many others, have copied, distributed, and/or displayed thousands of infringing Perfect 10 Copyrighted Works hosted by Defendants. Defendants host and provide Internet connectivity and other essential services for these websites,” the complaint reads.

In an accusation that pretty much targets the core of the Internet, Perfect 10 believes that OVH should have taken action against the infringing files that pass through or are hosted in its network. Because OVH failed to do so, the publisher claims that it suffered significant losses and is now demanding the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per infringement.

In theory this could get quite expensive. With a total of 1256 listed infringements OVH is facing up to $188 million in damages. However, considering Perfect 10′s track record in court the magazine publisher will probably be happy to settle for a tiny fraction of that.

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

The worldwide roller-coaster for The Expendables 3 continues to grab headlines and the movie hasn’t even been released yet. Normally that kind of situation would be coveted by movie makers, but the leak of the movie last month has put a different complexion on matters.

Last evening stars of the show were treading the red carpet in advance of the movie’s world premiere at the Odeon in Leceister Square, London, and of course questions turned to the inevitable topic.

Sylvester Stallone, who plays Expendables leader Barney Ross, was the first to be questioned. The 68-year-old said that while piracy leaves him sad, for some it had become a habit.

“That makes me feel really sad, but you know I understand that a lot of people have accepted that’s kind of a way of life,” Stallone said.

But while Stallone expressed disappointment, he also suggested that as a big star he probably wouldn’t be so affected. Others would, however.

“I think it’s unfortunate because it isn’t about me, i’m ok, but there’s thousands of people that won’t make movies. They won’t get a chance because they’ve lost a lot of money, that’s the trouble,” the star said.

Interestingly, another star of the movie viewed the leak in a more positive light. Kellan Lutz, who plays former Navy Seal John Smilee, said that while people are downloading illegally, that try-before-you-buy would lead them to still purchase theater tickets.

“So for the people who downloaded it, I actually think they’re gonna wanna watch it in the theaters because it’s a good movie,” Lutz said.

“They’re gonna watch it online, then they’ll be like ‘I gotta watch this in theaters now’, because all the one-liners that kind of go under-layered throughout the action, you just can’t hear that on a little iPad or computer,” the 29-year-old noted.

But while Lutz was looking on the bright side, Lionsgate continued to work flat-out behind the scenes in what they see as a damage limitation exercise.

As reported yesterday, the company has been issuing thousands of takedowns to remove unauthorized links to the movie online. This is in addition to legal action being taken against several torrent and other file-sharing sites.

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

For millions of Internet users around the world the Internet has broken down geographical borders like no other invention in history. Nevertheless, for those looking to consume entertainment online, digital checkpoints still exist in many countries.

Restricting content availability to certain ranges of IP addresses, or ‘geo-blocking’ as it’s know, allows content providers to dictate who gets access to films, TV shows and music, at what price, and when. As a result, citizens of countries such as Australia regularly complain that they’re denied content quickly and then charged more for it when it arrives.

As expected, however, many citizens choose to break down these borders by using VPNs and proxies, which enable them to access services such as Netflix regardless of their region. Last month, Kiwi ISP Slingshot admitted that its VPN-like ‘Global Mode’ service was actually designed to provide its customers with access to Amazon Prime, Hulu, Netflix US, and BBC iPlayer.

Now it appears that the admission will have consequences for Slingshot after a major broadcaster refused to run its ads on copyright grounds.

A spokeswoman for Sky TV confirmed to Stuff that a series of advertisements containing references to Slingshot’s Global Mode were rejected by the company.

“We are a business that pays people who create television so we are against any form of piracy or the undermining of intellectual property rights,” Sky TV spokeswoman Kirsty Way said.

Slingshot general manager Taryn Hamilton decried the move as “unjustified and petty” and said there would be no need for Global Mode if providers would offer content in a timely fashion at a fair price.

“When and if local companies manage to finally crack that, then there will be no need for the service. But, until that time, people will use services like Global Mode so that they can see decent TV without having to get a second mortgage,” Hamilton said.

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

The early release of the upcoming Expendables 3 film is one of the most high-profile leaks in recent history.

While pirated copies of most blockbusters eventually find their way online, a high quality leak weeks before a box office premiere is relatively rare.

To limit the availability of the movie Lionsgate has instructed several piracy monitoring companies to locate copies on various web services and target them with takedown requests. In little over a week, MarkMonitor, IP Echelon and Entura International have together sent out thousands of takedown requests targeting tens of thousands of URLs.

In a sworn testimony submitted to a California federal court, MarkMonitor’s Director of Global Operations Edward Cho explains that his company alone has submitted over 2,000 takedown requests.

“MarkMonitor, on Lionsgate’s behalf, began issuing take-down requests to the operators of the websites identified through our searches. MarkMonitor has sent approximately 2,770 take-down requests covering, cumulatively, 10,846 unique host URLs,” Cho says.

Interestingly, Lionsgate is not the only rightsholder going after leaked copied of the Expendables movie. The South Korean company Medialog also has a stake in the movie and is issuing takedown notices as well. These requests are not without problems as they target many legitimate sites.

For example, Medialog’s takedown request to Google includes TorrentFreak’s original news article on the leak, as well as reports by The Verge, Consumerist and The Daily Dot. Even worse, the company even included the official Expendables 3 website among the allegedly infringing URLs.

MarkMonitor does work directly for Lionsgate and Cho’s testimony is part of a new ex parte motion for a temporary restraining order the movie studio filed against the six file-sharing sites that were sued before the weekend. The sites in question, including Limetorrents, failed to respond to MarkMonitor’s takedown notices.

If the court grants Lionsgate’s request the website operators will be ordered to shut down their sites. In addition their financial assets will be frozen until further notice. Since it’s an ex parte request the site’s operators won’t have the option to defend themselves before the order is issued.

Lionsgate’s Executive Vice President Content Protection Robert Wenokur believes that these measures are warranted as the company is facing heavy losses as a result of the leak.

“Individuals who view the Film in this manner may not pay for tickets at the box office when the Film is released later this month. Similarly, such individuals may not purchase or rent copies of the Film when it is released to the home entertainment market after its theatrical run,” Wenokur notes.

Lionsgate’s request is quite extraordinary and unprecedented in a file-sharing case. There’s no doubt that other movie studios are keeping a close eye on developments, as the company’s approach may prove to be an effective way of targeting so-called rogue sites in the future.

Whether it will do much to stop those who want to grab a copy of the Expendables 3 leak is doubtful though. Even if the six sites are shut down, there are still hundreds of copies of the movie online, and dozens are being added every day.

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