Last Saturday TF reported on the now-controversial torrent streaming app Popcorn Time, a piece that was followed by dozens of mainstream articles in the week that followed. It quickly became evident that this software had broken new ground with its beauty and simplicity.

Unsurprisingly, the first signs of trouble were not far away. During the middle of the week the software was removed from Mega.co.nz. It’s still unclear if that action was taken by Mega under its own steam or after it was prompted by Hollywood, but with the Popcorn Time developers confirming they had nothing to do with it, one or the other must be to blame.

But after a stormy week, with the software receiving critical acclaim, last night the veils were being drawn over the project. In a long announcement on the tool’s website, the Popcorn Time team confirmed they were stepping down.

“Popcorn Time is shutting down today. Not because we ran out of energy, commitment, focus or allies. But because we need to move on with our lives,” the team explained.

“Our experiment has put us at the doors of endless debates about piracy and copyright, legal threats and the shady machinery that makes us feel in danger for doing what we love. And that’s not a battle we want a place in.”

The Argentina-based team added that piracy is not a people problem, it’s one based around service created by an industry that “portrays innovation as a threat to their antique recipe to collect value.”

But just as another flood of articles hit the mainstream press, each waving goodbye to Popcorn Time before moving on to something else, there’s important news yet to report.

Popcorn Time is not dead and will live on, seamlessly.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, YTS (formerly YIFY-Torrents) developer Jduncanator has confirmed that Popcorn Time will not die with the withdrawal of its founding team. Instead, YTS will pick up the baton and run.

“The YTS team will now be picking up the Popcorn Time project and continuing on like previously. We are in a better position copyright wise as for us, because it’s build on our API, it’s as if we have built another interface to our website. We are no worse off managing the project than we would be just supplying the movies,” the dev explains.

“It’s our vision at YTS that we see through projects like these and that just because they create a little stir in the public, it doesn’t mean they are shut down. That stir is exactly what the public needs and it’s already evident that people are becoming more aware of copyright-related issues.”

The project, which can now be found here, is open to all former developers who will be given contributor access upon request. The Popcorn Time installer will be made available shortly.

UPDATE: Since our interview with the YTS developer, YTS have given us a new statement which effectively distances them from the Popcorn Time project.

“Popcorn Time is a community driven project, not owned nor maintained by a single person or entity,” the site said.

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

As reported earlier this week, a New York federal court has granted the seizure of domain names, bank funds and social media accounts belonging to ripping software outfit DVDFab.

The decision follows legal action taken by AACS, the decryption licensing group founded by movie and technology partners including Warner Bros, Disney, Microsoft and Intel. The companies say that the Chinese company behind DVDFab violates the DMCA’s anti-circumvention clause by selling tools that can bypass their DVD encryption.

The orders of Judge Broderick, handed down after a DVDFab no-show, will see the company lose several domains, its social media accounts, bank account funds and payment processing options. Now, several days later, the effects of the ruling are being felt by other companies offering similar products.

First up Aiseesoft, another Chinese-based company behind a suite of video and ripping tools. The company was singled out in February’s USTR “rogue site” report for offering products that “allow users to circumvent technical protection measures and view video content in an unauthorized manner.”

Despite DVDFab never appearing on the “rogue” list, that company was targeted first, something that has clearly unsettled Aiseesoft. As reported by a Myce user, this week following the DVDFab ruling the company began sending out emails to its users, announcing its exit from the ripping market.

“Here I would like to represent our Company, Aiseesoft to inform all of you that as Aiseesoft settles a new product development plan, in which Aiseesoft will no longer sell software that rip or copy Blu-ray/DVD Videos,” the broken English email begins.

“According to that, we will remove some products that are relevant to Blu-ray and DVD tomorrow (20140314), which means you and your visitors will lose the access to any products that involved. It is a hard decision for us to make. But we have to focus attention on products that are promising.”

As can be seen from the Aiseesoft website, all DVD and Blu-ray ripping software has now been removed. While the company will no doubt be seeking its deletion from the USTR’s notorious markets list next time round, others not on the list are also seeing the writing on the wall.

Canada-based LG Software Innovations has also announced that it will discontinue its 1CLICK BLURAY COPY software.

Citing issues with the Cinavia Blu-ray protection mechanism, the lawsuit against DVDFab, and the apparent inability of companies outside the US to escape the jurisdiction of US courts, the company said that its forthcoming Blu-ray product will be shut down.

“Unfortunately, in light of recent events, we will not be releasing a final Blu-ray copy product for sale,” the company said.

“It was once thought that companies that were situated outside the U.S. could operate with impunity; this no longer appears to be the case. We do not wish to take any risks that could jeopardize our ability to continue to provide support and updates to our loyal 1CLICK users.”

But just as others exit the market, DVDFab says it is making every effort to undermine the actions taken against it, with new domains, a new support site, prize giveaways, product discounts and even protest graphics.

“In order to protect the interests of our existing customers, we have already recovered all the normal businesses to www.dvdfab.cn. At the same time, we promise to reverse the situation through every possible effort,” the company said on its new support site, ILikeDVDFab.com.

“DVDFab Team as a whole, will stick to the same mission in the years to come, to better your entertainment life. We shall not perish from this earth!”

In the meantime Slysoft, the business behind the famous AnyDVD software, remains on the USTR’s rogue list. The company, reportedly based in Antigua and Barbuda, has shown no public reaction to the DVDFab decision and continues to offer its products as normal.

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

In a written statement to a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on the DMCA takedown system, RIAA CEO Cary Sherman informed lawmakers about the ongoing struggle against online piracy.

According to Sherman the current takedown system is not sufficient to deal with the problem. One of the main issues is that several foreign websites simply ignore takedown notices, or put the links back under a slightly modified URL.

“The Pirate Bay website, for example, simply ignores takedown notices. Mp3skull, we believe, immediately repopulates, with modest changes in the address, all of its links that are contained within our takedown notices,” Sherman explains.

For the RIAA and other copyright holders there are no legal options to deal with these rogue sites. However, the music industry group believes that Google and other search engines can do more to prevent people from accessing pirate sites through their services.

Sherman explains that Google deserves credit for processing takedown notices swiftly, but since the search engine limits the number of takedown requests copyright holders can send, it’s impossible for them to target piracy properly.

“Google places a numerical limit on the number of search queries we can make to find the infringing content and, as a result, we can only take down a tiny fraction of the number of infringing files on each pirate site, let alone on the Internet generally,” Sherman notes.

“Google claims that they ‘receive notices for far less than 1% of everything hosted and indexed by Google.’ Well, that’s largely because their search query limitations provide us with a bucket to address an ever-replenishing ocean of infringement,” he adds.

Regardless of whether Google ups its limits, the DMCA takedown process is still not sufficient for the RIAA. Sherman explains that several sites simply change the links, which are then available through Google and other search engines a day later.

“All those links to infringing music files that were automatically repopulated by each pirate site after today’s takedown will be re-indexed and appear in search results tomorrow. Every day we have to send new notices to take down the very same links to illegal content we took down the day before. It’s like ‘Groundhog Day’ for takedowns,” Sherman says.

“Every day we have to send new notices to take down the very same links to illegal content we took down the day before. It’s like ‘Groundhog Day’ for takedowns.”

The RIAA believes that it’s time for search engines to strike a deal with copyright holders to address this issue. The industry group wants Google to end the piracy “whack-a-mole” by going beyond the legal takedown requirements.

”Ensure that when links to content are taken down, the same content on the same site is not continuously re-indexed when repopulated by the pirate site, rendering the takedown process useless,” RIAA’s CEO suggests.

RIAA’s checkboxes

In addition the RIAA wants Google to lift all takedown limits, push down pirate sites in search results, promote legal sites and services, remove pirate terms from Autocomplete and completely remove “repeat infringers” from their search index.

Google, however, clearly disagrees with the RIAA.

Katherine Oyama, Google’s Senior Copyright Policy Counsel, appeared before the House Judiciary Subcommittee yesterday and stressed that the DMCA process is working just fine. She noted that some copyright holders abuse the process, but in general it works.

Bouncing the ball back into the RIAA’s court, Oyama noted that copyright holders should consider better SEO if they want to improve their search rankings. Other than that, they should focus on offering consumers what they want; decent legal alternatives.

“The best way to battle piracy is with better, more convenient, legitimate alternatives to piracy, as services ranging from Netflix to Spotify to iTunes have demonstrated. The right combination of price, convenience, and inventory will do far more to reduce piracy than enforcement can,” Oyama said.

If anything, the above shows that Google and industry group such as the RIAA have a long way to go before they are on the same page. Both would like to address online piracy issues without new legislation, but in the near future they are not expected to reach consensus on the measures to take.

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

Although deceptively small considering its impact, Automattic is a company that touches hundreds of millions of Internet users every day. The company, best known for being behind the WordPress blogging and publishing platform, currently hosts more than 48 million sites on WordPress.com.

Servicing 400 million visitors accessing 13.1 billion pages each month is no mean feat, and with so much user-generated content on-board it’s obvious why the company has a keen interest in the DMCA and the protections it offers service providers.

Speaking today during a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on Section 512 of Title 17, Automattic General Counsel Paul Sieminski spoke about his company’s experiences with the notice and takedown provisions of the DMCA. Noting that the process works well overall, Sieminski said that shortcomings in the system negatively affect freedom of expression and adversly impact companies like Automattic.

Sieminski says that significant resources are being diverted away from product development at Automattic in order to deal with overbroad and abusive DMCA takedown notices. On the one hand the company wants to ensure freedom of speech, but balancing that with its legal commitments under the DMCA is not an easy task.

“At Automattic, we’ve seen an increasing amount of abuse of the DMCA’s takedown process. The DMCA’s takedown process provides what can be an easy avenue for censorship: simply send in a DMCA notice claiming copyrights in a piece of content that you don’t agree with. Regardless of whether you own the copyright, the service provider that hosts the content must take it down or risk being out of compliance with the DMCA,” the lawyer explained.

Sieminski went on to detail several cases where the DMCA had been abused to stifle speech, including one elaborate scam in which someone tried to undermine the work of science journalists by copying their work, backdating it, and claiming copyright in order to take down the original content. Although the journalists filed a counter-notice, it took the full 10 days mandated by the DMCA to get it put back online.

Another case involved a UK-based journalist who reported on a freely-given press statement. The source of the press release changed his mind on having it published, claimed copyright, and had the journalist’s work taken down under the DMCA. Concerned about submitting to the jurisdiction of a US court (those submitting a counter-notice are required to reveal their name and address and agree to be sued in federal court), the journalist chose to back down. His report remains censored to this day.

As reported here on TF on many occasions, wrongful DMCA notices are sent on a daily basis, many the product of automated systems that lack the finesse to correctly identify infringement, much less consider fair use situations. Add these notices to the millions already being sent and they often go undetected, taken down by nervous service providers wary of becoming liable for the infringements of others.

According to Automattic, a solution needs to be found.

“The DMCA system gives copyright holders a powerful and easy-to-use weapon: the unilateral right to issue a takedown notice that a website operator (like Automattic) must honor or risk legal liability,” Sieminski explained.

“The system works so long as copyright owners use this power in good faith. But too often they don’t, and there should be clear legal consequences for those who choose to abuse the system. I’d urge the Committee to add such penalties to the DMCA to deter and punish these types of abuses,” the lawyer concludes.

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

Despite numerous legal setbacks and continued pressure from copyright holders, The Pirate Bay is still here. In recent years the notorious torrent site expanded its reach with millions of users, each looking for the latest multimedia content.

The site’s status as one of the largest online media libraries has also piqued the interest of researchers, who are closely following what people are sharing.

Previously we documented how the number of files uploaded to The Pirate Bay increased 50% in just a year, and that more than one-third of the uploads are adult content.

A new study, conducted by researchers from the Institut Mines-Télécom in Paris and Madrid’s Universidad Carlos III, confirms the Pirate Bay’s expansion and adds several new insights. The researchers looked at large samples of torrents from various Pirate Bay categories, and polled the active sharers at various points in time.

“To the best of our knowledge it is the first study that weights several factors related to BitTorrent over a two years window,” researcher Reza Farahbakhsh tells TF.

From their data samples, which span from 2009 to 2012, the researchers draw three main conclusions.

• The number of high-definition video torrents on The Pirate Bay increased more than 500%.
• The median file-size of all torrents has doubled.
• Between 40-50% of all torrents point to video content and 80% of the total downloads come from these torrents.

During the latest measurement in 2012, high-definition video torrents accounted for 8.2% of the total, up from a mere 1.5% in 2009. As a result, the number of people downloading these files also surged, now making up nearly 10% of all downloads.

“The popularity of High-resolution PORN and VIDEO content follows the increasing availability of this type of content. While it only attracted 1.87% of the downloads in 2010, it has increased its popularity 5 times by receiving 9.62% of the downloads in 2012,” the researchers write.

Another result of the increased availability of high-definition videos is that the median size of all content indexed by The Pirate Bay has doubled over the years.

“The median value of the content size in 2009 was 223MB and increased by 53% (to 341MB) in the next five months, and it kept growing up to 370MB and 458MB in 2011 and 2012 respectively,” the researchers write.
The researchers’ data could act as a warning signal to Internet providers, who need to make sure they can handle further increases in their network usage. Not just with BitTorrent in mind either, but also other pirate sources such as cyberlockers where similar patterns may emerge.

“These findings are useful to those Internet players (i.e. ISPs, CDN operators) involved in the content distribution business in order to update their infrastructures, resources and algorithms to efficiently distribute and serve multimedia content,” the researchers conclude.

It will be interesting to see how the demand for high-definition content develops. With increasing broadband penetration and bigger screen sizes, the upward trend is expected to continue in the years to come.

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