Blocking The Pirate Bay has become quite common around Europe in recent years, and today this practice spread to Saudi Arabia.

Without prior warning or official announcement, the country’s Ministry for Culture and Information ordered local ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay. In addition, several other torrent sites were also censored, including Torrentz.eu and Rarbg.com.

The reason for the blockade remains unknown, but piracy concerns seem plausible as the measures are coming from the Ministry of Culture, and not the Communications Commission which administers the country’s regular filters.

As can be seen below, the blocking notification for The Pirate Bay is also different from the green notice that appears for sites that are blocked in violation of the Islamic religion.

Saudi Arabia’s Pirate Bay blockade

Interestingly, the measures come two months after several copyright holder groups urged the U.S. Government to place Saudi Arabia on its priority watchlist. MPAA, RIAA and others suggested that the country isn’t doing enough to stop online piracy.

The blockade is currently active on nearly all ISPs, but TF has learned that Zain customers can still access the site. Zain does block Pirate Bay’s porn category, but that’s nothing new.

The Pirate Bay is among the 50 most visited websites in Saudi Arabia, and the blockade has caused quite a bit of uproar on social media. The topic is currently trending on Twitter where many people are voicing their frustration.

TPB block trending on Twitter

However, as with all censorship attempts there are plenty of ways to circumvent this blockade. The easiest option at the moment is to simply use the https version of the site. Other workarounds, such as VPNs or Pirate Bay proxies, work fine too.

The Pirate Bay team is not impressed by yet another country blocking access to their website. A few months ago they released Pirate Browser which allows users to access the site without restrictions. It has been downloaded millions of times since.

Update: The Saudi Arabian Ministry of Culture and Information has now confirmed that the blockades are copyright related. 22 domain names have been blocked in total.

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

In recent years the music industry ‘s battle against piracy mostly focused on torrent sites, cyberlockers and unauthorized MP3 indexes. However, new research from the industry analysis firm NPD Group suggests that a new, much bigger threat, has arrived.

NPD’s Senior Vice President, Industry Analysis, Russ Crupnick informs us that mobile music piracy through apps has outgrown traditional P2P file-sharing and direct downloads.

“In terms of the number of internet users doing a variety of music sharing activities, downloading from mobile apps is the most popular,” Crupnick tells TF.

The data comes from unpublished research, which was the first to include statistics on the usage of mobile apps to download music. Quite surprisingly, mobile piracy comes out on top right away.

It is estimated that in the United States 27 million people downloaded at least one music track via their mobile over the past year, mostly without permission. This trumps all other forms of online piracy. By comparison, 21 million people used traditional P2P sites such as The Pirate Bay to download music.

For other media types the results are different, but the findings signal an interesting trend.

According to NPD mobile apps are, as one would expect, most popular with younger consumers. There are a variety of reasons for the mobile piracy explosion, but the research firm believes that increased usage of smartphones and apps among Millennials is a major driver.

“My guess is there is an underground buzz network about music apps that is fueled by teens and Millennials,” Crupnick says.

NPD believes that it’s important for copyright holders and app platforms to work together to tackle this problem. While some people may know that these apps are unauthorized, the fact that they appear in iTunes or Google Play may give them an air of legitimacy.

“Lots of things on the web are free or ad-supported, including some entertainment content. I’m sure some users are quite aware that there is music that is not legally distributed on these apps, but others may not be as educated,” Crupnick tells us.

“If it’s on an app store, it must be ‘OK’. This is where the music industry and technology companies have an opportunity and maybe an obligation to work together to make sure consumers understand, and artists get compensated,” he adds.

These last comments appear to signal a new working territory for the music industry’s anti-piracy initiatives. Until now, there hasn’t been a major campaign against “infringing” apps, but this is bound to change in the near future.

Whether a crackdown on apps will be enough to counter the current mobile piracy trend has yet to be seen. In addition to pirate apps, several unauthorized MP3 indexes have also developed mobile versions, which will prove much harder to deal with.

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

EZTV is undoubtedly the most popular TV-focused torrent site on the Internet today. Founded way back in 2005, it is also one of the oldest with nine full years under its belt.

Through its indexing of all popular TV shows, EZTV has become the go-to venue for torrent downloaders but behind the scenes the site has been wrestling with a copyright predicament. Instead of sending in takedown notices via email, in recent months several studios switched to sending theirs in via regular mail, overloading the site’s staff in the process.

“For the first few days UPS turned up with a couple of small boxes of notices, but it was soon several crates a day stacking several feet deep,” EZTV informs TorrentFreak.

In a bid to solve the crisis, EZTV decided to speak with the two studios responsible for sending the majority of the notices. The outcome of the discussions, which were facilitated by the MPAA, was unequivocal – EZTV would have to massively change the way it does business.

EZTV went back to the drawing board. Which model could they emulate to show that they were now a completely neutral, content agnostic platform? Which company, by virtue of the fact that it had never been sued by the studios over its indexing, could EZTV emulate?

It was obvious – GOOGLE.

Visitors to EZTV today can see the outcome. Instead of the layout users have become accustomed to over the past near-decade, EZTV now sports a minimal Google-style search engine beneath a new and rebranded EZTV logo.

All TV show categories have gone and all that remains are descriptions pulled from the Internet using algorithms licensed from Google. Completing the sterilization of the site, all torrents have been deleted and now only magnet hash values of content specifically searched for by the user are listed.

But EZTV’s operators wanted to do more. Realizing that Google’s Auto-Complete and Auto-Suggest features only serve to direct people to infringing content, EZTV now filters these from Google’s API and hence its own search results. Not suggesting stuff before people had even asked for it was a key MPAA-pleasing move.

Honing the business model that has enabled Google to avoid being sued by any Hollywood studio over its search results, EZTV went further still. Working closely with City of London Police’s new Operation Creative, EZTV has filtered out not only all major brands’ advertising, but all advertising entirely.

“We’ve never had any advertising on EZTV but noticed how little trouble Google has had monetizing links to potentially infringing content. With that in mind, we decided nearly a decade ago to go much further, but we’re only really shouting about it now,” EZTV told TF.

Unsurprisingly, the MPAA are pleased with the results.

“By working with the industry, EZTV has successfully removed all financial incentives for it to exist by cutting off its own revenues for the last nine years,” the MPAA said in a statement. “This is just the kind of action that will save jobs and fuel innovation.”

The changes, which were phased in during the past month but visible over the past few hours, were expected to solve all of EZTV’s problems, but this morning at the site’s spacious New York offices a different picture was emerging.

“Becoming just like Google is proving to be a nightmare. Just like them we’re now receiving millions of notices every hour,” EZTV told TF in phone call a few minutes ago.

“UPS just turned up with a convoy of trucks. We’re scanning the notices as quickly as we can but the folks at Chilling Effects have already run out of space.”

Whether EZTV will continue to emulate Google into the future is unclear, but at this point it seems that going back to the way they were might be the best option.

Update: Yes this this was an April Fools prank. EZTV is back to normal now.

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

In the summer of 2012, the FBI with assistance from French and Dutch police shut down applanet.net, appbucket.net and snappzmarket.com, three sites that offered Android apps outside Google’s ecosystem.

The action was heralded as ground-breaking, with the authorities seizing the domains of these alternative stores and putting up the now-infamous FBI banner to inform visitors of their fate. Together it was claimed the sites were responsible for millions of dollars in losses to software producers.

News of the shutdowns came in August 2012, but it took until last week for the U.S. Government to provide a significant update. The Department of Justice revealed that two of the three operators of the Appbucket site had signed a plea deal with the Government and now face sentencing in June.

But while the Appbucket guys appear to have accepted their fate, the former admin of Applanet certainly has not. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Attorney Rain Minns says her client is still under fire, but won’t be giving in.

“It is extremely unfortunate that some of the young people targeted by the government’s dragnet have been forced to plead guilty,” Minns told TF.

“But this is an inevitable, and incredibly sad and disheartening, consequence when the United States unleashes the power and resources of the most powerful nation on earth against defenseless citizens who, like Aaron, care about free and open world-wide access to publicly available information, and who have not earned any significant income for their efforts.”

But while Minns says that the mere threat of a long prison term is enough for even the most innocent citizen to plead guilty, that isn’t going to be happening in Aaron’s case.

“Aaron is an extraordinarily brave and ethical young man, who is not willing to buckle under the pressure of the government’s abusive practices. He believes that someone should stand up to abuse of power, and he is willing to put himself at risk if that is the only way to keep information sites free and open.”

To that end and in an effort to level the playing field against the Government, Minns informs TF that Aaron’s legal team has just received a significant boost.

“After an extensive vetting process, I have now been joined by Attorney Antonio Ponvert III, an accomplished and much-feared civil rights lawyer from Connecticut who, to put it plainly, has enjoyed kicking the government’s ass for almost 25 years,” Minns explains.

“Antonio’s task is to take the offense in Aaron’s case, focusing on the government’s violation of state and federal civil rights laws, the First Amendment free speech implications of the government’s tactics, and the substantial reputational and financial harm that the D.O.J. has inflicted, and will continue to inflict on Aaron. One can be sure that a damages case is coming down the pike if, and when, an indictment is forthcoming.”

Through his lawyer Aaron informed TF that while it’s a pity that the Appbucket guys were “forced to buckle under the heavy-handed threats of the government”, he wishes them luck as he looks forward to his own day in court.

From the tone of the language employed by Rain Minns and by extension Antonio Ponvert, there appears to be plenty of appetite for a fight, should the Government decide to go the whole way against Aaron. If they do, Minns is confident he will prevail.

“It is not even close to a fair fight anymore. And we look forward to the battle,” she concludes.

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

The Pirate Bay has been around for more than a decade and has undergone quite a lot of change during that time. However, nothing comes close to today’s announcement.

“We’re about to take the biggest step in our history,” says TPB in a blog post that went out earlier than expected.

In addition to changing the look of its frontpage the site has renamed itself to ‘The Virtual Bay’ to celebrate a new partnership with neuroscientists from Russia, Israel and Japan. The goal is to build a next generation virtual reality device that will change the way people interact with the site and the pirated media it offers.

“As piracy is about to change from sharing of files into the sharing of everything, we’re planning our departure from this earthly form. Preparing our final ascension into the transcendence. The final conflux,” the TPB team notes.

Traditional media companies are resisting change and have been slow to pick up on virtual reality, but The Pirate Bay is jumping in to fill this void. When the site’s device is ready, Pirate Bay users will be able to actively participate in the games and videos downloaded from the site.

“Using a simple plugin into the brain, you will no longer only be able to see and hear a movie, a game or whatever it is you want. You’ll be able to live it. Play the main character. Tweak any story in any way you want,” TPB writes.

In addition, the virtual reality component will store the entire Pirate Bay ecosystem in people’s minds, making it accessible instantaneously, faster than ever before, and impossible to shut down. In other words, the people will become The Pirate Bay and take the site to a new dimension.

“Using your brain power and nervous system, we will be able to speed things up. Every part of The Pirate Bay will be stored within you and everyone else that dares to participate in this step into the future. The more we are, the faster everything will be.

“Our scientists calculate that if we become at least 1,333,337 nodes, everything will be shared instantaneously,” the TPB team adds.

More details about this prestigious project are expected to come out later today, or tomorrow, depending on your time zone. Stay tuned.

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