Every few weeks fresh sites are blocked in Italy on copyright grounds, following either court proceedings or hearings as part of the new AGCOM mechanism.

Many of the big ‘pirate’ sites – The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents, for example – have been blocked for years but now the country seems intent on blacking out sites that are definitely not in the piracy business.

As reported here on Saturday, last week a judge sitting in the Court of Rome ordered local ISPs to block a total of 24 websites including Kim Dotcom’s Mega.co.nz and Russia’s largest email provider, Mail.ru.

The size and importance of Mail.ru in its home country and further afield is noteworthy. It’s the fifth most-visited domain in Russia behind only Yandex, Google and social networking giant vKontakte, of which it owns 51.99%. It’s the 39th busiest site worldwide according to Alexa, servicing in excess of 27 million users per day.

In a statement this morning Mail.ru said it has still not been able to establish the specifics that lead to it being blocked in Italy. Eyemoon Pictures, the complainant in the case, made no attempt to discuss any issues with Mail.ru before heading off to court, the email giant said.

“[Eyemoon Pictures] made no attempt to resolve the situation pretrial,” the company said in a statement.

“No notification of illegal content or requirements to remove copies of [Eyemoon's] films has been addressed to Mail.Ru Group from law enforcement agencies and Italy.”

The company only realized there was a problem when users began complaining of accessibility issues on July 17.

“We learned of the court’s decision from our users, as well as publications in the public domain,” Mail.ru added.

Criticizing the effects of the blockade on its userbase, this morning Mail.ru hit out at Italy for taking action without due consideration.

“We believe that this situation is detrimental to the interests of our users, and clearly illustrates the fact that some national laws in this area does not consider the specifics of the Internet companies and do not provide a clear, transparent process for resolving such conflicts,” the company said.

“There needs to be an active dialogue on the development of international pre-trial procedures for resolving disputes between copyright holders and Internet service providers. Their introduction will improve the position of all parties, including users worldwide,” Mail.ru concludes.

At the time of writing, Mail.ru is still inaccessible in Italy with the company having made no progress towards having the censorship lifted.

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

This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

Need For Speed 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	(3)	Need For Speed	7.1 / trailer
2	(5)	The Other Woman	6.5 / trailer
3	(1)	Transcendence	6.4 / trailer
4	(2)	Noah	6.3 / trailer
5	(…)	Transformers: Age of Extinction (HDTS)	6.3 / trailer
6	(…)	Brick Mansions	5.9 / trailer
7	(4)	Sabotage	6.0 / trailer
8	(…)	The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Webrip)	7.4 / trailer
9	(7)	Rio 2	6.7 / trailer
10	(10)	X-Men: Days of Future Past (HDCAM)	8.5 / trailer

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

When I was travelling recently, an interesting point came up. A colleague of mine didn’t mind buying copies of culture (games, movies, etc.), but always bought them second-hand – specifically so the copyright industry shouldn’t get any money.

I realized immediately that this point torpedoes the most common fallacy against culture-sharing completely: that of the artist having some sort of “right to money” when you enjoy work that they once created. There are many ways to show that as a complete fallacy, some more convoluted than others (planned economy, libraries, market value, street musicians…) but I realized this is one of the most straightforward yet.

Nobody, especially not technophobic dinosaurs, object to second-hand book and record shops. And yet, when somebody buys there, the author or musician doesn’t get a cent – and we think that’s completely in order, just as completely without question.

When this sinks in, you realize that it was never about the money at all in the first place. It was merely about what the self-appointed cultural elite saw as their territory and their habits, where they can allow others to tread or deny them the privilege. Second-hand shops have always been a central part of a cultural rich life. The Internet is something completely new (well, perhaps not anymore) that denies the old elite the privilege of having their established ways remain the norm.

And yet, there it is in black and white. There is no connection at all between “you enjoying a fine work” and “the artist getting paid”. None whatsoever. When you’re buying something at a second-hand store and enjoying it, the original writer doesn’t get a cent, and everybody thinks that’s okay. (Even if a few people in the copyright industry are trying to outlaw second-hand sales, they’re not being very successful at it.)

So try this conversation the next time a self-appointed Guardian Of The Ways criticizes the good art of sharing culture and knowledge:

- You shouldn’t enjoy somebody’s work without paying them for it.

- That’s nonsense. Second-hand bookstores and record stores are the backbone of a rich culture, and people are enjoying fine works there without the artist getting a cent.

- But, but, the artist got money when somebody originally bought it!

- Yes, maybe so, but that’s not what you said. You said that somebody must pay the artist to have a right to enjoy their work. That’s clearly not true.

At that point, the argument is derailed, and they will probably talk about how the Interwebs should be outlawed instead. Try it, it’s fun!

About The Author

Rick Falkvinge is a regular columnist on TorrentFreak, sharing his thoughts every other week. He is the founder of the Swedish and first Pirate Party, a whisky aficionado, and a low-altitude motorcycle pilot. His blog at falkvinge.net focuses on information policy.

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

There are hundreds of millions of pirate files inhabiting the Internet and it’s fair to say that many of those are music tracks. As a result, the world’s leading record labels, who together claim 90%+ of the market, spend significant sums making those files more awkward to find.

For sites like The Pirate Bay, which point-blank refuses to remove any torrents whatsoever, the labels have little option than to head off to Google. There the search giant will remove Pirate Bay links from its indexes so that users won’t immediately find them.

However, rather than engaging a link whack-a-mole, the best solution by far is to remove the content itself. Perhaps surprisingly, many of the world’s leading file-lockers (even ones labeled ‘rogue’ by the United States), allow copyright holders direct back-end access to their systems so they can remove content themselves. It doesn’t really get any fairer than that, and here’s the issue.

This week, while looking at Google’s Transparency Report, TF noticed that during the past month massive file-hosting site 4shared became the record labels’ public enemy number one. In just four weeks, Google received 953,065 requests for 4shared links to be taken down, the majority of them from record labels. In fact, according to Google the BPI has complained about 4shared a mind-boggling 6.75 million times overall.

So, is 4shared refusing to cooperate with the BPI, hence the group’s endless complaints to Google? That conclusion might make sense but apparently it’s not the case. In fact, it appears that 4shared operates a removal system that is particularly friendly to music companies, one that not only allows them to take content down, but also keep it down.

“Throughout the years 4shared developed several tools for copyright owners to protect their content and established a special team that reacts to copyright claims in timely manner,” 4shared informs TorrentFreak.

“We don’t completely understand BPI’s reasons for sending claims to Google instead of using our tools. From our point of view the best and most effective way for copyright holders to find and remove links to the content they own is to use our music identification system.”

To find out more, TF spoke with the BPI. We asked them to comment on 4shared’s takedown tools and in the light of their existence why they choose to target Google instead. After a few friendly back-and-forth emails, the group declined to comment on the specific case.

“We prefer to comment on our overall approach on search rather than on individual sites, which is to focus on known sources of wide scale piracy and to use a number of tools to tackle this problem,” a BPI spokesman explained.

“Notice-sending represents just one part of the measures available to us, along with site blocking and working with the Police to reducing advertising on copyright infringing sites.”

We asked 4shared to reveal other copyright holders using their system, but the site declined on privacy grounds. However, it’s clear that the BPI isn’t a user and 4shared have their own ideas why that might be.

“It’s possible that BPI goes for quantity not quality,” TF was told.

“If they are trying to increase the number of links in reports or for PR reasons, they probably use a bot to harvest and send links to Google despite the fact that such an approach may also result in false claims.”

The “PR” angle is an interesting one. Ever since Google began publishing its Transparency Report rightsholders have used it to demonstrate how bad the piracy problem is. Boosting those numbers certainly helps the cause.

But is it possible, perhaps, that the BPI doesn’t trust the 4shared system. They didn’t answer our questions on that front either but it seems unlikely since 4shared uses EchoPrint, a solution purchased by Spotify earlier this year.

“Our music identification system which is based on Echoprint technology will not only find all matching content but will also restrict sharing of all potential future uploads of such content,” 4shared concludes.

Take-down-and-stay-down is the Holy Grail for anti-piracy companies. It’s a solution being pushed for in the United States in the face of what rightsholders say is a broken DMCA. On that basis there must be a good reason for the BPI not wanting to work with 4shared and it has to be said that the company’s “PR” theory proves more attractive than most.

The volume of notices in Google’s Transparency Report provide believable evidence of large-scale infringement and it’s certainly possible that the BPI would prefer to have 4shared blocked in the UK than work with the site’s takedown tools.

We’ll find out the truth in the months to come.

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

Last Wednesday we reported a particularly miserable situation between the RIAA and a near 20-year-old radio fansite.

Around since 1996, ReelRadio is a service dedicated to streaming historical radio shows, specifically decades-old ‘aircheck’ demo recordings which were often used to showcase radio announcers before being placed in the archives.

ReelRadio isn’t some ‘rogue’ site determined to avoid paying artists. The site does its bit by paying a proper license, but last week the RIAA decided that it needed to more strictly enforce its terms. Trouble is, those terms are so restrictive that not only will the site have to drastically reduce its user experience in order to comply, in some instances it may actually prove impossible to meet the terms.

Sadly, TorrentFreak has discovered that ReelRadio isn’t on its own. The RIAA has also been contacting other sites with demands for compliance. On July 11, PatesTapes.com, a site dedicated to vinyl-to-tape-to-digital mixtape archives created by Charles Pates, also received a letter from the industry group.

“The demands are almost exactly the same as what ReelRadio is reporting – remove ‘archived recordings’ after two weeks and ‘archive recordings’ must be longer than five hours. In our case, saying what is in the recording before it plays is a no-no,” PatesTapes’ Dennis Wallace informs TF.

What makes the RIAA’s pressure even more unpalatable is the entirely not-for-profit nature of PatesTapes. In fact, the site deliberately generates absolutely no revenue whatsoever yet chooses to pay ASCAP, BMI and SoundExchange a total of $5,000 in licensing fees to keep things above board.

“It’s a total labor of love,” Wallace told TF.

“[The site] has a small but passionate following (a steady 200 listeners per day over several years), and the typical listener would put on a tape and let it auto-play from tape to tape within the same category over the course of the next several hours,” Wallace explains.

Now, however, the future of the site is in the balance. Earlier this week it seemed almost certain that PatesTapes would be closing down but now the team is taking time out to assess their position.

“We had a meeting and we’ll be trying to revive the site rather than shutting down. We’re moving from a ‘pick your tape’ model to more of a ‘pick you stream’ model, based on a longer set list. We are going to be running this past legal minds so we can be more sure about any subsequent challenge,” Wallace adds.

Characteristically for the RIAA, the letter sent to both PatesTapes and ReelRadio concludes with a threat.

“If we do not hear from you by August 22, 2014, we will assume that you do not intend to remedy the violations and will take whatever measures we feel are necessary,” the RIAA warns.

At this point it’s worth noting the contrast between the RIAA’s dealings with the world’s biggest file-sharing sites and the hobbyist services highlighted above. The former pay not a cent in licensing fees and yet carry on unhindered, business as usual, millions of copyrighted items available. The latter, who are paying thousands of dollars in licenses, for little to nothing in return, just to have fun, are having their existences threatened.

It appears that being small and being honest is not only interpreted as a weakness, but also as an opportunity to pull in even more revenue. The question is, however, how many sites like these will simply close down and take their money with them.

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