Following a series of High Court orders, six UK ISPs are required to block subscriber access to several of the world’s largest torrent sites.

The blocks are somewhat effective, at least in preventing subscribers from accessing the domains directly. However, that doesn’t mean that the sites are completely inaccessible.

With every site that is added to the blocklist several reverse proxies are launched. These proxy sites give people access to the blocked sites and effectively bypass the restrictions put in place by the court.

The copyright holders who demanded the blockades are well aware of these workarounds and continue to ask ISPs to expand their blocking efforts.

This weekend the ISPs quietly added several torrent site proxies to their blocklists. TorrentFreak was able to confirm that Virgin Media and Sky are now blocking access to YTS proxy ytsre.come.in as well as the EZTV equivalent on come.in.

Interestingly, the other torrent site proxies, including ones for the Pirate Bay and Kickass, are still accessible.

YTS proxy blocked

Whether these measures will be effective has yet to be seen. The Come.in homepage is still accessible and the team behind the site has already replaced the blocked domains with new ones.

“We just set up new proxies and will be watching for any upcoming measures from ISPs,” Come.in’s Nick tells TorrentFreak.

“We monitor such issues on a regular basis. Most of the time we can create new proxies only after current ones are blocked. Come.in visitors should know that we always publish fresh proxy addresses on our homepage,” he adds.

And so the whack-a-mole continues, with copyright holders adding new domains to the blocklists, and site owners hopping from domain to domain.

As with previous additions the newly blocked domains are covered by the High Court order, which provides the movie studios with the option to continually update the list of infringing domains. A Virgin Media spokesperson clarified that no additions are made by the ISP itself.

“We are only blocking those sites we are required to block by the court order,” we were told. “As a responsible ISP, Virgin Media supports the clear, legal framework put in place to protect against copyright infringement and we continue to comply with court orders specifically addressed to the company.”

While the recent additions are permitted under the High Court order, these changes are being made in secret without any form of public oversight, which means that we don’t know precisely how many proxies were added. The full list of blocked domains also remains unknown.

TorrentFreak reached out to both copyright holders and ISPs, but thus far they have refused to make the full scope of their blocking efforts public. It’s unlikely that this will change in the near future.

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The full list of domains (that we know of) currently blocked in the UK is as follows:

Main sites: Megashare, Viooz, Watch32, Zmovie, Solarmovie, Tubeplus, Primewire, Vodly, Watchfreemovies, Project-Free TV, Yify-Torrents, 1337x, Bitsnoop, Extratorrent, Monova, Torrentcrazy, Torrentdownloads, Torrentreactor, Torrentz, Ambp3, Beemp3, Bomb-mp3, Eemp3world, Filecrop, Filestube, Mp3juices, Mp3lemon, Mp3raid, Mp3skull, Newalbumreleases, Rapidlibrary, EZTV, FirstRowSports, Download4all, Movie2K, KickAssTorrents, Fenopy, H33T and The Pirate Bay.

Proxies: Ytsre.come.in, Eztv.come.in, Fp.kleisauke.nl, Fenopy.5gg.biz, H33tunblock.info, H33t.uk.to, H33tproxy.co, H33tmirror.co, Katunblock.com, Katproxy.com, Kat.dashitz.com, Kat.kleisauke.nl, Katmirror.com, Kat.5gg.biz, Kickassunblock.info, Kickassproxy.info, Pirateproxy.net, Proxybay.net, Malaysiabay.org, Piratereverse.info, Pirateproxy.net, Campeche.zapto.org, Tpb.rubenstadman.com, Piratebay.interflective.com, Dashitz.com, Tpb.evrl.com

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

Four years is a long time to fight over a website, but that’s exactly what Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN and pair of local ISPs have been doing since 2010.

The action began when BREIN targeted Ziggo, the Netherlands’ largest ISP, in an attempt to force it to block The Pirate Bay. Ziggo were later joined in the case by rival ISP XS4ALL, with the pair teaming up against the prospect of a bad precedent and an avalanche of additional blocking demands.

The case has taken numerous twists and turns, with a court first deciding that blocking all subscribers was a step too far. BREIN responded to this defeat by taking the case to a full trial, which it won. The ISPs refused to give in, filing subsequent appeals on the basis that any blockade would be ineffective and would deny subscribers free access to information.

In January the Court of The Hague sided with Ziggo and XS4ALL, leaving the ISPs to unblock The Pirate Bay, an action they took immediately.

BREIN limped away with no blockade and close to half a million dollars in legal fees, but one last legal avenue remained – taking the case to the Supreme Court. According to XS4ALL, on April 25 this year it was summoned by BREIN to defend itself in the Supreme Court.

A statement issued by the ISP explains that the appeal will not see the dispute resubmitted in its entirety and judged on its merits as is often the case. Instead, the Supreme Court will only overturn the decision from January if it finds that the Court of the Hague “erred in law” or failed to comply with procedural rules.

“The facts as determined by the Court are fixed, the case will not be materially redone and the Supreme Court itself will not perform an investigation. The claimant [BREIN] cannot bring more new facts, nor contest the facts. Only the legal criteria which the Court has applied will be questioned,” the ISP explains.

“If the appeal is successful and the judgement of the lower court is set aside, it may be sufficient to conclude the case. If a new examination of the facts is necessary, the Supreme Court will probably refer back the case to the Court for a full retrial,” XS4ALL adds.

XS4ALL now has until September 5 to submit a statement for its defense.

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

Since August 2013, rightsholders in Russia have enjoyed greater powers to help them deal with websites carrying or linking to pirated movies and TV shows.

The pre-trial mechanism allows for the imposition of so-called “preliminary interim measures” should the sites in question fail to remove or block infringing content in a timely fashion. These can include a court ordered service provider blockade of specific URLs.

The process has been used dozens of times during the past ten months or so. Earlier this month the Moscow City Court took action to restrict the availability of 15 TV shows illegally posted online including Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, True Blood and American Horror Story. Several torrent site URLs were ordered to be blocked by ISPs, including those on the popular RuTor.org.

Now, just a week later, the local exclusive rightsholder of the above shows plus others including Boardwalk Empire, True Detective, Homeland, Girls and True Blood, wants to have its content completely blocked on a wide range of sites.

The case is being brought by “A Series” and will begin in the Moscow City Court next month. According to Rapsinews, July 10 has been set aside for pre-trial preparations and to clarify the requirements of the parties, including a call for evidence and addressing other issues relevant to the forthcoming trial.

The lawsuit will target more than a dozen sites and BitTorrent trackers including rutor.org, lostfilm.tv, bigcinema.tv and gamethrones.ru, most of which have been targeted in previous actions.

News of the lawsuit arrives following the announcement of an agreement between the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Culture to beef up the law introduced last year. A source inside the government told Izvestia that the text of a new anti-piracy bill has been finalized and will be submitted to the Duma in the near future.

While the law’s new stricter provisions will be welcomed by rightsholders, the music industry will again be disappointed. Movies and TV shows are covered by current law, but music is not, and the package of amendments about to be presented will not see the introduction of music protection until 2016.

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

This week we have two newcomers in our chart.

A Million Ways to Die in the West 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	(7)	A Million Ways to Die in the West (Webrip)	6.4 / trailer
2	(1)	300: Rise Of An Empire	6.6 / trailer
3	(2)	X-Men: Days of Future Past (HDCAM)	8.5 / trailer
4	(…)	Godzilla (TS)	7.2 / trailer
5	(3)	The Grand Budapest Hotel	8.3 / trailer
6	(…)	Maleficent (TS)	7.4 / trailer
7	(6)	Rio 2	6.7 / trailer
8	(8)	The Lego Movie	8.2 / trailer
9	(5)	Edge of Tomorrow (TS/Cam)	8.2 / trailer
10	(4)	Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist	8.5 / trailer

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

It’s no secret that P2P file-sharing services are widely used to distribute pirated movies. However, less is known about the volume of these unauthorized transfers in various countries.

New data published in a Dutch report detailing the impact of unauthorized P2P file-sharing on the movie industry reveals that in the Netherlands alone an estimated 78 million euros are lost due to movie piracy.

The same report also provides some interesting statistics that shed some light o geographical file-sharing differences.

During the first half of the year MarkMonitor, which is also the technology partner for the U.S. six strikes program, tracked 16 popular English language blockbuster movies. The list includes titles such as Frozen, The Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug, and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

The movies were monitored via both eDonkey and BitTorrent, with the latter having the largest audience. In total MarkMonitor found that these movies were shared 150,186,156 times without permission.

Despite the focus on English language films, most pirated copies – more than 20 million – were shared from Russia. The bar chart below shows the full top 10 based on the absolute number of infringements that were detected, with the United States, Italy, Brazil and Spain completing the top five.

It is of course no surprise to see these large countries on top. It gets more interesting when we look at the number of file-sharers per capita.

In the United States for example, 12.5 million pirated copies were shared in a population of more than 310 million, which is roughly 4%. In Russia this percentage is much higher at 15% and in Australia it’s more than 16%.

Not surprisingly, the list of countries that share the most pirated movies per capita is quite different.

According to the report, the movies in the sample were relatively most shared in the United Arab Emirates, followed by Israel, Estonia, Greece and Italy. Australia, Qatar, Sweden, Singapore and the Netherlands complete the top 10.

It has to be noted that the findings above are based on a sample that is biased towards Western content. This explains the absence of Chinese downloaders, who tend to share files through other channels. Similarly, the data doesn’t cover direct downloads and streaming sites which may be relatively more popular in other regions.

That said, the numbers do give some more insight into the popularity of P2P movie piracy, or lack thereof, across various countries.

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