Popcorn Time has had more than its fair share of press since it appeared earlier this year. The tale has enjoyed twists and turns in buckets, not to mention controversy and mystery.

The software was undoubtedly a game changer and the most simple and elegant way of downloading and viewing content using torrents. Nothing came close.

Except all along something else did – and then some.

Let’s not take anything away from it, Popcorn Time is pretty neat, but the software just introduced to TorrentFreak goes much, much further. It’s called Zona and could very well ignite an even bigger storm.

Zona hails from Russia but fear not, its 27mb installer appears in standard English. Getting the thing working is child’s play too, just make sure it’s being allowed through your firewall after setup. If users want it to become their standard torrent downloader that option is available too, but advanced users will probably prefer the flexibility of their regular client.

Once setup is complete, users are presented with the following screen, movies up first. Much of the artwork depicted is pulled from Russian sources, so for non-speakers a reliance on movie covers will be required. If that fails, directly under each movie is the title in clear English.

Click those titles and new page will appear, detailing everything people might want to know about the movie including its date of production, iMDb rating, genre, actors (including photos), runtime, and other sundry details. Here’s the page for the Creative Commons movie, Big Buck Bunny.

When selecting a movie a choice can be made – to stream Popcorn Time-style, or to download to the PC like a regular torrent client. If the former is chosen there is a wait of between a few seconds and a minute while enough buffering takes place. The movie is first presented in a small non-intrusive window in the left corner of the app, but this can be expanded to any size, including full screen.

Eagle-eyed viewers will note the ‘audio and subtitles’ text on the bottom right of the window above. This enables switching between English and often Russian audio, plus the toggling of various subtitles.

While Popcorn Time was restricted to content indexed on YTS, Zona has no such limitation. The app appears to have access to many, many thousands of movies pulled from torrent sites around the web. It is not clear where, but random searches hardly ever fail to turn up the required content although sometimes playback can hesitate, possibly due to lack of seeds. That said, a database of 500,000 torrents should be more than enough.

Zona is no slouch on the movie front, but it isn’t done yet. The software also caters to the TV fan and does it with never-seen-before flair. After selecting ‘TV’ from the list on the left, Zona presents TV shows in the same way as it does movies. However, when clicking through to the details screen one can see how it excels, with options to select any series and any episode. Since it’s topical, here’s how the page looks for Game of Thrones.

Just below the recommended additional viewing graphics, one can see options to select a series and episode. Clicking on those brings up all of the sources, usefully filtered by video quality. Also on offer is a “subscription” feature, which allows people to subscribe to a series ‘Tivo-style’, leave the software running, and have the content appear when a new episode is released.

Another trick up Zona’s sleeve is its ability to steam live TV from a selection of built in channels. While many are Russian, there are plenty of English language channels too. Covering everything from news, to light entertainment to documentaries, it’s also particularly strong in sport, with free access to UK premium channels including all Sky Sports and BT Sport channels.

After ticking every box on the video front, Zona goes one step further by streaming music too. Users need to quickly sign up for a VK.com social networking account first, but after that almost every track one can think of will become available in the software.

Conclusion

Overall, it’s hard to fault Zona. It looks great and works nearly as well. There’s a huge range of content spanning movies, TV shows and music, and no other app that we’re aware of has as many options and features. It’s not open source, at least that we can see, so one up for Popcorn Time there. But it can stream to DLNA-enabled TVs, so that might balance things up a bit.

Oh, and you can filter out the adult content if kids are around. We did mention it does porn as well, didn’t we? No? That means we probably forgot to mention the Android version too.

Zona can be downloaded from its homepage, or directly here.

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

Just like other citizens around the globe, for years the Dutch have enjoyed downloading their favorite music, movies and TV shows from the Internet. However, while people in most other countries do so while breaking the law, residents of the Netherlands had no fear of being fined, or worse.

This position was made possible by the introduction of a levy on writable media such as blank DVDs and CDs, and other storage-capable devices such as hard drives, media players and smart phones. A portion of the sales revenues on these devices went to the rightsholders in an attempt to compensate them for their perceived losses.

But despite years of operation, earlier this month the system came to an abrupt halt. Following complaints from electronics manufacturers upset that their products were being made more expensive by the levy, a landmark ruling from the European Court of Justice declared the system illegal. The Dutch government responded by declaring that downloading from illegal sources was banned with immediate effect.

But while downloading of copyrighted content was outlawed (uploading was already illegal), few people believed that a handful of words from the government was likely to change the position on the ground. Furthermore, since the ban was hastily introduced on April 10, members of parliament have begun calling for a debate on its consequences.

“We do not want a ban, but would rather have a broad discussion focused on ways to reduce unpaid downloading,” D66 MP Kees Verhoeven told NU.nl.

“The aim of the download ban is to reduce the amount of unpaid material being downloaded, but experience shows that bans do not help in such cases.”

Labour MP Astrid Oosenbrug also called for debate on the download ban, which she first heard about through the media.

“I read about this new measure in the news,” she said, adding that soon after consumers began asking questions about how it would affect the private copying levy.

“Therefore, both MPs and citizens are unclear about the implications of this prohibition,” she said.

Calling for a debate with the Secretary of State in May, D66 MP Kees Verhoeven said that his party doesn’t want prohibition, but would prefer to see entertainment companies work on better legal offerings instead.

“It is important that the legal supply of music, films and series, is both accessible and of a high quality,” he said. “We do not want a ban, but a larger legal offer.”

Separately, in comments reported by Tweakers, Wiebe Alkema, spokesperson for the Ministry of Security and Justice, said the download ban would make it easier for entertainment companies to go after ‘pirate’ sites, since there is no longer a legal gray area.

“The burden of proof is easier,” he said.

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

Free and legal streaming services such as Hulu have been proven to slow down piracy rates in the United States.

At the same time, however, they also created a new problem. With a relatively cheap VPN subscription, people from all over the world can connect to the site via a U.S.-based IP-address and bypass its geographical restrictions.

In an effort to deal with these unauthorized users, Hulu has started to block visitors who access the site through an IP-address that’s linked to a VPN service. This blockade also applies to hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens.

Hulu’s blocklist was implemented this week and currently covers the IP-ranges of all major VPN services. People who try to access the site through one of these IPs are not allowed to view any content on the site, and receive the following notice instead.

“Based on your IP-address, we noticed that you are trying to access Hulu through an anonymous proxy tool. Hulu is not currently available outside the U.S. If you’re in the U.S. you’ll need to disable your anonymizer to access videos on Hulu,” the notice reads.

Hulu Blocked for VPN users

The sudden blockade hasn’t been announced publicly by Hulu, but it’s clear that the service wants to lock out all foreign users. The main reason for this is most likely to please TV networks and movie outlets.

Previously, entertainment industry sources in Australia complained bitterly that “VPN-pirates” were hurting their business, as tens of thousands of potential subscribers were using the U.S. version of Netflix.

However, the problem with Hulu’s blanket ban on VPN services is that U.S. citizens are forced to give up their privacy as well. They can still watch Hulu, but not securely. TorrentFreak has contacted several providers, who dealt with dozens of complaints on this issue yesterday.

VikingVPN was one of the first to notice the change, and TorGuard and Private Internet Access have been dealing with the fallout too. The latter is currently engaged in discussion with Hulu hoping to find a solution.

“Private Internet Access exists to protect the privacy of netizens everywhere. Many of our customers leave their Private Internet Access accounts enabled 24/7/365. It is unfortunate that Hulu is blocking VPN service IPs,” Andrew Lee, CEO of Private Internet Access told TF.

“We have an existing relationship with Hulu and are reaching out to them directly to see what we can do about fixing this issue,” Lee adds.

VikingVPN is disappointed with Hulu’s decision as well, and rightfully points out that the streaming service could at least implement SSL to protect the privacy of its visitors.

“We’re upset that our users would have to disconnect from our service in order to access Hulu. We encourage users to remain connected in order to guard their privacy, 24/7. Hulu could mitigate a small portion of this concern if they would at least implement SSL on their website,” VikingVPN’s Micah Greene tells TorrentFreak.

TorGuard informs us that not all of their shared IP-addresses have been blocked yet. When this happens, they plan to role out more dedicated IPs which are likely to remain undetected.

“In the event of wide-spread IP blocking a quick fix for the problem is to use a dedicated VPN IP. This ensures that no other user on the network has registered an account under that same IP address,” TorGuard’s CEO Ben Van Pelt informs TF.

“TorGuard has thousands of dedicated IPs on hand in our US locations and we’ve already seen an increase in purchases for this add-on today,” Van Pelt adds.

The above makes it clear that there may be ways to circumvent the Hulu blockade, so U.S. citizens can still keep their VPN connection alive while watching.

However, it’s clear that Hulu is taking a stand against foreign “pirates” who use their service without permission.

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

AACS, the decryption licensing outfit founded by a group of movie studios and technology partners including Warner Bros, Disney, Microsoft and Intel, launched a crackdown on DRM-circumvention software earlier this year.

In the most prominent action AACS sued the makers of popular DVD ripping software DVDFab. Last month it won a preliminary injunction based on the argument that the “DVDFab Group” violates the DMCA’s anti-circumvention clause, since their software that can bypass DVD encryption.

The injunction barred the Chinese-based DVDFab from distributing its software in public, by allowing AACS to order the seizure of its domain names. In addition, the company’s social media accounts were blocked and bank funds frozen.

DVDFab initially did not respond to the court, so the order was entered by default. However, after the injunction was issued the company responded in the name of Feng Tao, with a request for the court to revise its earlier judgment.

The company informed the court that the injunction is too broad, as it basically shuts down the entire operation based on U.S. law. The anti-circumvention provisions the injunction is based on don’t apply worldwide, they argue.

“It is well-established that the Copyright Act doesn’t apply extra-territorially,” the company notes.

Since DVDFab’s domain names and bank accounts were seized the injunction also blocks DVDFab’s business in other countries, which goes too far according to the lawyers.

“For example, shutting down the DVDFab domain names and enjoining the payment processors prevents defendant Feng Tao from using such domain names and payment processors for sales of unrelated products, and for sales of DVDFab products outside the United States,” they note.

For this reason DVDFab asks the court to amend the injunction so it only applies to the United States. This would require the return of seized domain names and social media accounts, plus the lifting of payment processing restrictions.

In a response, AACS points out that DVDFab has violated the preliminary injunction from the start. The company immediately registered several new domain names that are not under U.S. control, and continued business as usual. DVDFab also allegedly launched a new “BluFab” brand under which it sells copies of its DVD ripping software.

Even more controversially, AACS claims that a DVDFab representative threatened them in an attempt to settle the issue. A person named “Frank” contacted an AACS lawyer and offered an “exclusivity delay” with all major circumvention software makers, if AACS agreed to lift the domain name seizures. If AACS declined this offer, DVDFab would give away its software for free, the company allegedly said.

“Frank said that DVDFab was the largest circumvention software maker and it could align all other major circumvention software makers to allow AACS LA a one to three weeks exclusivity delay on introducing circumvention software in exchange for AACS LA restoring the DVDFab Websites and business.”

“Frank stated that if AACS LA refused the deal, DVDFab Defendants would distribute the software for free, thereby rendering AACS LA irrelevant,” AACS lawyers adds.

AACS further points out that the scope of the injunction isn’t too broad at all. According to the company, the Copyright Act allows for such measures in cases where the actions of a foreign business are “felt within the United States.”

It’s now up to the court to decide who’s right in this case.

For the time being, all U.S.-controlled DVDFab domain names, social media accounts and payment processing services remain unavailable. However, the software maker is still operational through several new domains, which can be easily found through Google and other search engines.

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

An attempt to introduce laws that would have given the Mexican government the power to block the Internet and other telecommunications appears to have failed.

The government earlier said it wanted to introduce legislation to combat illegal activities on the Internet, including child pornography. But after drilling down into the details of the text, activists say that the draft law being debated by the Senate would allow the government to censor the Internet whenever it liked.

One of the articles, which states that the government could force Internet service providers to “temporarily block, inhibit or annul telecommunications signals at events and places deemed critical for the public safety” sparked protests both on and offline, with hundreds taking to the streets on Tuesday.

While the government insists that the measures are only intended for dealing with serious crime, activists are concerned that the proposals go too far, threatening both privacy and economic development.

But by yesterday the tone of the government had changed, with Sen. Emilio Gamboa, leader of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party in the Senate, announcing that the proposals would be scaled back.

“Any other additional power, like the blocking of signals for national or public safety will be excluded from the reform,” Gamboa said.

In attempt to calm the situation further, Gamboa added that new measures to force ISPs to hand over information on their subscribers would not be expanded.

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