To gather the opinions of the public and other stakeholders on copyright reform, the EU Commission launched a consultation a few months ago.

The call resulted in hundreds of submissions, which were made public recently. One of the topics being covered is the issue of “digital resales.” In other words, whether consumers should be allowed to sell digital music files, videos and software they purchased previously.

In the United States the ReDigi case has been the center of this debate, with a federal court ruling in favor of Capitol Records last year. In the EU, however, the Court of Justice previously ruled that consumers are free to resell games and software, even when there’s no physical copy.

In the submissions to the EU Commission consultation numerous parties weigh in on the subject. Interestingly, the UK Government takes a rather progressive stance by stating that people should be allowed to sell “used” tracks bought in the iTunes store, or used videos they’ve downloaded from Amazon.

“As regards the resale of copies, the UK notes that traditional secondary markets for goods can encourage both initial purchase and adoption of technologies, and the prospect of sale on the secondary market may be factored in to an initial decision to buy and to market prices,” the UK response reads

“There seems to be no reason why this should not be the case for digital copies, except for the ‘forward and delete’ issue noted by the consultation,” it adds.

In other words, according to the UK Government people have the right to sell any digital files they have bought, as long as the original copy is deleted. This stands in sharp contrast to the various record label groups who warn that digital resales may crush the industry.

IFPI, for example, notes in its submission that allowing digital resales would hurt the entire music industry, and threaten the livelihoods of many artists.

“In the recorded music sector, the consequences of enabling the resale of digital content would have very harmful consequences for the entire music market,” IFPI writes.

“The notion that the exhaustion principle should apply to copies acquired by means of digital transmissions in the same way that it applies to physical copies ignores the many differences between the two kinds of copies and between the two distribution processes,” the music group adds.

IFPI signals three main differences between digital and physical distribution that warrant a ban on digital resales. According to them, physical music is different because:

• the quality of these deteriorates with time, and often due to wear and tear or mishandling
• purchasing an item at a used record store requires traveling to the store and searching for a copy of the phonograph record
• the resale only concerns the original recording, not copies of that recording

In other words, people shouldn’t be allowed to resell digital music because it’s too convenient, and because the copies don’t lose their quality.

While it’s no surprise that the labels are against digital resales, these arguments do raise some eyebrows. After all, there are also many physical products that are easy to ship and keep their value over time, which are perfectly fine to resell.

IFPI is not alone in their restrictive view on selling used digital files. The UK-based music group BPI also submitted a response to the consultation, using similar arguments, as did individual labels such as Universal Music and Sony Music.

“The consequences of allowing resale of previously purchased digital content would be devastating to the music industry. It would compete directly with the sale of original digital files as they would be entirely substitutional,” Universal notes, for example.

It is now up to the EU Commission to sift through all the submissions to see what the ideas of various stakeholders and the public are on the matter, and how this should impact future legislation.

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

Last summer The Pirate Bay celebrated its tenth anniversary, and today the site reached another noteworthy milestone.

Just a few hours ago the 10 millionth torrent was uploaded to the notorious torrent site. Considering all the legal trouble and outside pressure the site has been subjected to, this is quite an achievement.

The torrent in question is a pirated copy of a video from the “IntimateLesbians” series, and was uploaded to the site by VIP uploader “Drarbg.” The 9,999,999th upload, the extended remix of Calvin Harris’ Summer, didn’t go unnoticed either.

TPB’s 10 millionth torrent

The Pirate Bay team told TF that the milestone came as a surprise to them and they quickly had to patch a few things to make sure that the backend was ready for the extra decimal. Among other things, the rules to fetch the .torrent files needed an update.

While The Pirate Bay has processed 10 million uploads, not all torrents are still online today.

In fact, the majority have been deleted for a variety of reasons. The Pirate Bay team informs TF that their database currently holds roughly 3,050,000 torrents. All the other torrents have been removed.

One of the main reasons why torrents disappear from the site is because they are fake. For example, many scammers upload viruses or video files that link people to malware. In addition, anti-piracy outfits have been known to flood The Pirate Bay with fake content.

The Pirate Bay has a policy in place to deal with this abuse, which prescribes that all torrents where the content doesn’t match the description should be deleted. A team of moderators works around the clock to enforce this golden rule.

Right now, nearly 10,000 daily uploads are added to The Pirate Bay. This means that if The Pirate Bay continues to grow, the next 10 million milestone will probably be reached in a year or two.

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

With over a million visitors a day, Megashare is one of the largest video streaming portals on the Internet.

The site operates from .sh and .info domains and has enjoyed steady growth since its launch in 2010.

However, out of nowhere, visitors were welcomed by a rather shocking notice on the site’s homepage this morning. Apparently, Megashare has plans to shut down due to trouble with its video hosting provider.

“Because there are problems with video hosting company, MEGASHARE is closing and not updaing new movies in future. Thank you for your support!” the announcement reads.

The abrupt decision comes as a surprise, and seems illogical for a site of its nature. Megashare doesn’t host any of the videos itself but relies on files from third-party sites such as Google, Putlocker and Sockshare.

Interestingly, a few days ago we published an article which revealed that Megashare was one of the streaming portals that used Google as video hosting provider. Whether this is related to the “video hosting troubles” is unknown.

In any case, users are not happy with the site’s decision and the site’s Facebook page and Twitter are filling up with people begging the site not to throw in the towel. Whether this will have any effect remains to be seen.

Tweets about “megashare”
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Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

After obtaining government funding to protect the rights of mainstream music and movie companies, last year UK police began a campaign aimed at closing dozens of torrent and other file-sharing sites.

Many sites subsequently reported receiving letters from PIPCU, the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, warning that their operations had been scouted and deemed to be infringing.

While most sites ignored the warnings, some inevitably felt the pressure and decided to quit while they were ahead. In the months that followed direct pressure on sites reduced when police began to concentrate on indirect measures, such as pressuring registrars to retract domains and advertisers to stop supporting sharing sites.

However, earlier this month police restarted their direct approach, sending threat letters out to the operators of torrent sites in an attempt to close them down directly. In at least one case the police have been successful.

Due to its coverage of sports including the NHL, NBA, soccer and Formula 1, The Sports Torrent Network (TSTN) was a site popular with fans on both sides of the Atlantic. With an estimated 20,000 userbase and its own ‘capping’ team, the site was certainly a fan favorite and possibly the largest site of its type. But now, after an unwelcome warning, the party is over.

Along with other sites, a little under two weeks ago TSTN received communications from the police which stated that the site’s operators could be committing crimes with serious penalties attached.

“Such activity is an indictable offense under the Serious Crime Act 2007 and is punishable by up to ten years’ imprisonment (two years for encouraging/assisting communication to the public; and ten years for encouraging/assisting distribution to the public),” the police explained.

“PIPCU has the lawful right to pursue action against you and against the thesportstorrentnetwork.co.uk website in order to prevent, detect and disrupt criminal activity.”

While the threats looked official enough, a more detailed examination of the correspondence sent to TSTN raised questions over its authenticity. As can be seen from the screenshot below, a clear spelling error was present in the title of the mail, which lead to concerns this may have been some kind of fake.

However, an additional error later in the email suggested that it was probably genuine. As can be seen under the highlight, it appears that police neglected to fill in a precise date instead of the placeholder text.

But errors aside, TSTN decided that while it had been a good run, now was the time to thrown in the towel. The site is now permanently closed.

“We are sad the site had to go but feel it was the only option,” a staff member told TF.

With calls from the UK Prime Minister’s IP advisor to permanently fund the Intellectual Property Crime Unit, the shutdown of TSTN will certainly not be the last.

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

This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

Son of Batman 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	(…)	Son of Batman	6.3 / trailer
2	(1)	The Machine	6.3 / trailer
3	(…)	The Physician	7.3 / trailer
4	(2)	Ride Along	6.4 / trailer
5	(…)	Captain America: The Winter Soldier (CAM/R5)	8.3 / trailer
6	(4)	47 Ronin	6.5 / trailer
7	(…)	Need For Speed	7.3 / trailer
8	(3)	The Nut Job	5.7 / trailer
9	(10)	Frozen	8.1 / trailer
10	(back)	300: Rise of an Empire	6.9 / trailer

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