For more than a decade copyright holders have been sending ISPs takedown notices to alert account holders that their connections are being used to share copyrighted material.

These notices are traditionally nothing more than a warning, hoping to scare file-sharers into giving up their habit. However, anti-piracy outfit Rightscorp has been very active in trying to make the consequences more serious.

The company monitors BitTorrent networks for people who download titles owned by the copyright holders they work for, and then approaches these alleged pirates via their Internet providers. The ISPs are asked to forward Rightscorp’s settlement demands to the alleged infringer, which is usually around $20 per shared file.

The settlement approach is a bigger stick than the standard warnings and according to Rightscorp it’s superior to the six-strikes scheme. And there’s more. The company also wants Internet providers to disconnect subscribers whose accounts are repeatedly found sharing copyrighted works.

Christopher Sabec, CEO of Rightscorp, says that they have been in talks with various Internet providers urging them to step up their game. Thus far a total of 140 ISPs are indeed following this disconnection principle.

“We push ISPs to suspend accounts of repeat copyright infringers and we currently have over 140 ISPs that are participating in our program, including suspending the accounts of repeat infringers,” Sabec says.

During a presentation at the Anti-Piracy Summit in Los Angeles Rightscorp recently pitched this disconnection angle to several interested parties.

Rightscorp presentation slide

By introducing disconnections Rightcorp hopes to claim more settlements to increase the company’s revenue stream. They offer participating ISPs a tool to keep track of the number of warnings each customer receives, and the providers are encouraged to reconnect the subscribers if the outstanding bills have been paid.

“All US ISPs have a free Rightscorp website dashboard that identifies these repeat infringers and notifies the ISPs when they have settled their cases with our clients. We encourage the ISPs to restore service once the matter has been settled and there is no longer an outstanding legal liability,” Sabec told TorrentFreak.

Cutting off repeat infringers is also in the best interests of ISPs according to Rightscorp, who note that it is a requirement for all providers if they are to maintain their DMCA safe harbor.

Rightscorp is indeed correct in stating that Internet providers have to act against repeat infringers. The DMCA requires ISPs to “… adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network who are repeat infringers.”

However, legal experts and Internet providers interpret the term “repeat infringer” differently.

For example, AT&T previously said that it would never terminate accounts of customers without a court order, arguing that only a court can decide what constitutes a repeat infringement. Comcast on the other hand, previously told us that they are disconnecting repeat infringers, although it’s not clear after how many warnings that is.

Nevertheless, Rightscorp claims that their approach has been a great success and proudly reports that 140 ISPs are actively disconnecting subscribers. So does this mean that all U.S. Internet subscribers are at risk of receiving a settlement request or losing their Internet access?

Well, not really.

Most of the larger Internet providers appear to ignore Rightscorp’s settlement notices. Comcast, for example, does forward the notice but takes out the settlement offer. Verizon, AT&T and other major ISPs appear to do the same. Thus far, Charter seems to be the only major provider that forwards Rightscorp’s requests in full.

The 140 ISPs Rightscorp is referring to are mostly smaller, often local ISPs, who together hold a tiny market share. Not insignificant perhaps, but it’s a nuance worth adding.

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

In the file-hosting and file-linking worlds there are laws in place to protect site operators from liability for their users’ actions.

When a site operator is informed via a valid notice that content being hosted or linked to is infringing copyright, removing or disabling access to that content ensures protection under relevant U.S. and EU legislation. That said, there are some gray areas which turn the tables on liability.

Some sites, often forum-style indexes that link to copyright movies, music and software hosted elsewhere, have more than just casual links with the external sites where the content is actually hosted. In fact, some anti-piracy outfits claim that many are operated by the same owners, or so close as to make little difference.

The idea is that one site provides the content while the other supplies links and valuable eyeballs. Acting together the pair collect all the revenue from advertising, affiliate schemes, and subscription payments, while maintaining in public that they still qualify for safe harbor.

Being able to prove that this is the reality behind the scenes is another matter, but this week Italian police say they managed to do just that. Reportedly exposing the connections between a linking site and an associated cyberlocker, police presented evidence to the authorities and obtained a domain blocking injunction from a local court.

As a result DDLStorage, a file-hosting site that has grown substantially in the past 15 months serving 460 million files while allegedly pocketing 1.3 million euros, is now inaccessible by direct means in Italy.

“This is a really important case for the anti-piracy battle,” says Luca Vespignani, General Secretary of anti-piracy group FPM.

“For the first time in Italy we can unequivocally reveal the presence of a direct and illegal connection between a pirate website and its cyberlocker. It is essential to investigate the organization of these structures to seriously disrupt digital piracy.”

The investigation into DDLStorage found that the site started in Italy and had 120 servers located first in France and then the Netherlands.

“Just 3 per cent of users on the platform uploaded files and only 0.2 per cent were receiving revenues for the content they uploaded,” FPM said in a statement. “Uploaders were paid the more their content was downloaded by other users, with individual payments running up to €40,000 per year.”

TorrentFreak contacted DDLStorage and asked them for a response to the allegations that they’re involved in a criminal enterprise.

“We are not in Italy, we are not an Italian company,” the site told us. “We are online without any problems. We are working to resolve this problem with the Italian users.”

DDLStorage is indeed online, as the injunction only relates to Italian ISPs. However, the site’s comments suggest that it could be attempting to find a workaround to continue serving not only the world market, but the Italian market again too.

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

While over a billion people are enjoying the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, organizer FIFA is working around the clock to make sure that their rights are protected.

Stopping pirated live streams is one of the main priorities, but there is another concern. In all the excitement many social media users have added World Cup related logos and other pictures as their avatars, something that’s strictly forbidden by FIFA.

The football organization fears that use of their logos and emblems by others may cause serious damage. FIFA believes that this endangers the entire worldwide football community.

“Any unauthorized use of the Official Marks not only undermines the integrity of the FIFA World Cup™ and its marketing programme, but also puts the interests of the worldwide football community at stake,” FIFA says in an official statement.

Social media is particularly worrisome because the official logos may lead followers to believe that the user is somehow related to FIFA.

“FIFA’s official logos, symbols and other graphic trade marks may not be used on any social media platform. FIFA’s Protected Terms may not be used to create the impression that a page is officially related to the 2014 FIFA World Cup,” FIFA notes.

Considering the above FIFA sees no other option than to crackdown on Twitter users with official FIFA logos and images as avatars. In recent weeks Twitter has been asked to take action against several of its users, by removing their infringing profile pictures.

FIFA takedown notice

The requests were made for a wide variety of images including the World Cup emblem, logo and even the trophy. Twitter appears to have honored the requests and has replaced the infringing avatars with the default egg.

Most of the targeted accounts seem to be specifically related to football. However FIFA has also asked Twitter to remove the profile picture of @afobajee, a relatively random user.

Most of the affected users have changed their profile pictures to something non-infringing. However, others appear to have simply switched back to using official FIFA material.

We expect that FIFA still has their eye on the ball, so these infringing profile pictures probably won’t stay online for very long.

Infringing profile picture

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

Website blocking has become one of the music and movie industries’ favored weapons in their seemingly endless fight against online piracy. Blocks of torrent and other sharing sites are in place in many countries around Europe, mainly due to court injunctions forcing ISPs to take action against copyright infringement.

While legal action is one way of introducing a blockade, other methods require much less time, effort and money. This week the spotlight was placed on the UK, where the government has pressured ISPs to introduce default-on filtering for their subscribers, ostensibly for the protection of children. The result is huge overblocking and conveniently for the entertainment industries, hundreds – possibly thousands – of file-sharing sites wiped out with the correct settings.

With the right level of knowledge these filters can be turned off, but other more serious national anti-child abuse mechanisms cannot.

The UK’s Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) maintains a blocklist of URLs that point to sexual child abuse content. Over in New Zealand the Department of Internal Affairs maintains DCEFS, the Digital Child Exploitation Filtering System. Both are run in cooperation with the countries’ ISPs with the sole aim of keeping the most objectionable material away from public eyes.

Today, however, it’s been revealed that Hollywood attempted to broaden the remit of New Zealand’s DCEFS in order to protect their own interests.

The Motion Pictures Distributors Association (MPDA) has a familiar sounding name and unsurprisingly has some well-known backers. Fox, Sony, Paramount, Disney, Universal and Roadshow are all members of the group which coordinates the distribution of movies in New Zealand.

According to a RadioLIVE report, in order to prevent copyright infringement the studios requested access to the DCEFS child abuse filtering system.

After obtaining government permission, Hollywood hoped to add their own list of sites to DCEFS so that by default subscribers to New Zealand’s main ISPs would be prohibited from accessing torrent and other file-sharing type sites.

But in the face of objections from both the ISPs and the Kiwi government, Hollywood was forced to scrap its plans.

“[The ISPs] were not prepared to agree to that extension and in any case it would have shifted the mandate somewhat from [the Department of Internal Affairs'] primary focus on preventing sexual abuse of young children,” Internal Affairs Minister Peter Dunne told the show.

There can be little doubt that Hollywood believes web filtering is an effective mechanism to reduce infringement – MPAA chief Chris Dodd explicitly said so during his speech at the International IP Enforcement Summit last month. But the notion that governments should treat the filtering of copyrighted content and child abuse in the same way is not only controversial but unlikely to win sympathy with the public.

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

The major record labels still see online piracy as one of the main threats to their industry. To counter this problem they are constantly monitoring the Internet for copies of their work being shared without permission.

This also happens at SoundCloud, which in recent years became one of the most popular services for people to share music.

As a legitimate service, SoundCloud helps copyright holders by accepting takedown requests. However, in some cases SoundCloud goes a step further.

This is what DJ Mr Brainz discovered after his paid account was terminated due to repeated copyright infringements. Mr Brainz used SoundCloud to post copies of his radio show, which he believes drives more sales, but Universal Music disagreed and took down his files.

To find out more about the alleged infringements the DJ asked SoundCloud for additional details, as Do Androids Dance reports. Quite surprisingly, however, SoundCloud couldn’t provide more information as the removals were carried out by Universal music directly.

“Your uploads were removed directly by Universal. This means that SoundCloud had no control over it, and they don’t tell us which part of your upload was infringing. If you look at your tracklist it may help you find the Universal content they wanted blocked,” SoundCloud’s copyright team explained.

“The control of removing content is completely with Universal. This means I can’t tell you why they removed your uploads and not others, and you would really need to ask them that question,” the SoundCloud representative adds.

In other words, SoundCloud grants Universal Music the power to delete any and all content they deem to be infringing. This apparently happens without oversight or any record of what’s being taken down.

This blanket removal power is especially problematic since the affected users don’t know what they have done wrong. Without any details on the allegedly infringed track, it’s pretty much impossible to file a counter notice.

These type of broad takedown powers are not unique to SoundCloud. Previously YouTube has come under fire because the company allowed record labels to remove “disrespectful” videos or other non-infringing files the labels deemed inappropriate.

The recent issues at SoundCloud are not an isolated incident either. Over the past several months many users have complained about an avalanche of takedown notices. After America’s DJ Kaskade had 70 percent of his SoundCloud tracks removed due to alleged copyright infringements, he said he would start his own music sharing site instead.

“I will move forward with constructing my own portal where I can share what I like when I like,” Kaskade said.

Despite the critique SoundCloud sees no wrongdoing. The company points out that users are free to dispute any inaccurate takedowns. Unfortunately that’s easier said than done.

It is clear that SoundCloud is putting its users at a significant disadvantage here.

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