Last week turned out to be yet another hectic seven days for the copyright enforcement obligations of Google. The search engine received requests to de-list 6.51 million allegedly infringing URLs, yet another new record in a piracy battle that seemingly has no end.

If the entertainment companies had their way, however, things would be handled differently. The general line coming out of the MPAA, RIAA and their UK-based counterparts BPI, is that by now Google knows which domains are infringing copyright. On this basis action should be taken to render their indexes harder to find. Or better still, have them de-listed from search engines altogether, the rightsholders say.

While Google has shown zero interest in the latter proposal, over in Europe a case underway since 2011 has now concluded, with a thought-provoking outcome for the entertainment industries.

The case dates back to December 2011 when L’Association des Producteurs de Cinéma (APC), a group which in itself represents more than 120 companies including Paramount and Sony, teamed up with La Fédération Nationale des Distributeurs de Films (FNDF) and Syndicat de l’Edition Vidéo Numérique (SEVN). Adding to the already formidable lineup, the groups were later joined by the Union of Film Producers (UPF) and the Union of Independent Producers (SPI).

The film and TV companies’ complaint, rooted in Article 336-2 of the Intellectual Property code, targeted 16 domains connected to the popular Allostreaming, Fifostream and DPstream video portals. The aim was to force the world’s largest search engines – Google, Bing and Yahoo – to completely delist the sites from their search results and to have local ISPs block them.

After previously obtaining emergency interim measures, yesterday the studios received good news from the High Court of Paris.

The court ruled that the film industry had clearly demonstrated that the sites in question are “dedicated or virtually dedicated to the distribution of audiovisual works without the consent of their creators,” thus violating their copyrights.

As a result the search services of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and local company Orange are now under orders to “take all necessary measures to prevent the occurrence on their services of any results referring to any of the pages” on these sites.

Several ISPs – Orange, Free, Bouygues Télécom, SFR, Numéricable and Darty Télécom were also ordered to “implement all appropriate means including blocking” to prevent access to the infringing sites.

Rightsholders have been celebrating the decision in the case which was concluded after almost two years of legal wrangling.

“The ruling today by the High Court in this case recognized the merits of the approach forcing ISPs and search engines to cooperate with right holders in the protection of the law of literary and artistic property on the Internet,” they said in a statement.

But despite the big win, the cards didn’t all fall in favor of the movie companies. PCInpact reports that they had demanded that the search engines and ISPs foot the bill of the blocking and censorship, but the court decided otherwise.

“The cost of the measures ordered can not be charged to the defendants who are required to implement them,” the decision reads.

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and the ISPs now have two weeks to implement the measures, which come on the heels of the EU Advocate General’s advice earlier this week on the blocking of infringing sites.

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

Every week millions of people download the latest episode of the Showtime hit series “Homeland” via file-sharing sites.

Tens of thousands of these downloads originate from Poland, where it can take weeks before the episodes air on local TV. This huge interest in unauthorized copies has created a high demand for “pirate subtitles,” a niche which the group Hatak has been serving for years.

Many copyright holders are not happy with these pirate subtitle releases and prefer to shut these sites down. But where others see a threat, the Polish book publisher Wydawnictwo Otwarte (Open Publishing) decided to use this unauthorized distribution channel to its advantage.

The publisher is selling the Polish translation of David Kaplan’s book “Homeland: Carrie’s Run,” which is a prequel to the popular TV-series. In a unique opportunity to appeal directly to thousands of Homeland “pirates,” the publisher teamed up with group Hatak to promote the book.

“We decided to advertise via subtitles because we wanted to show the book to all the fans of the Homeland series in Poland, no matter where they watch the show,” Maciej Migda, Managing Director at Wydawnictwo Otwarte told TorrentFreak.

The publisher explained that they wanted to plug the book in spots where people would see it as useful information instead of an ad. This means that the added text should not interfere with people’s viewing habits.

“We also wanted to inform them about the prequel book in a specific context. When they watch the credits and flashbacks from the Carrie’s past we catch them with the phrase ‘How did it all begin? Let’s read the prequel book,” Migda says.

Below is a screenshot of the subtitle file and how it appears on-screen. In this case during the opening credits the subtitles show the text “How did it start? You will learn from a book prequel “Homeland: Carrie’s Run.”

Subtitle file promoting the book

TorrentFreak spoke to Karol, the Hatak group member who translates Homeland for Polish viewers. He tells us that the cooperation with the publisher is not really an ad, his main motivation is to bring the book to the attention of Homeland fans.

“It’s just information for the ‘Homeland’ fans about the new book, based on Showtime’s hit series. Unfortunately, the book promotion in Poland was really poor, so I thought placing the mention about it in subtitles was in the fans’ best interest.”

The publisher gave Hatak several copies of the Homeland book in return for the promotion, which the group gave away via their Facebook page.

“The publisher gave us a few copies of the book, so we could organize the prize competition on Facebook. In addition, we received a few copies of ‘A Captain’s Duty’ for our Facebook fans, without running an ‘ad’ in the subtitles.”

“I think it’s a really good deal that makes everyone happy and so far I haven’t had any complaints from the users,” Karol notes.

The Polish Homeland subtitles are downloaded by roughly 4,000 people every week, which results in a lot of highly targeted promotion for the book. According to the publisher, Homeland fans appreciated the guerrilla advertising which resulted in at least a few extra sales.

“The responses we got so far tell us that people appreciated the fact that we informed them about the book, and some have bought it,” Migda informs TorrentFreak.

To our knowledge this is the first time that a copyright holder has teamed up with a subtitle group to promote related content. While we don’t expect this type of promotion to become mainstream anytime soon, it is a great example of how unauthorized distribution is able to add value for copyright holders.

Publisher explains its advertising strategy in a video

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

From very early in its life the Internet became a mine of amazing things, but while accessing information was relatively easy for most, becoming a publisher was a different matter.

Soon enough regular people learned the skills to put up a rudimentary webpage, but it wasn’t until the advent of mainstream file-sharing networks that anyone could become a publisher of information, simply by putting a file in a folder.

As a result countless pieces of media – from music and video, to documents, artwork and software – were distributed by individuals to every corner of the Internet-enabled globe.

Over the years many thousands of curiosities have appeared online in this manner, such as unfinished movies, unreleased songs, top-secret military documents, plus all manner of sundry ephemera subsequently given almost eternal life. Today, fans of writer J.D. Salinger will have something particularly extraordinary to talk about.

What.cd, an invitation-only BitTorrent tracker, is probably the most coveted source of music on the Internet. The site is a veritable goldmine of audio of every conceivable genre, all wrapped up in the best software interface the BitTorrent site world has to offer. But technicalities aside, what the site has is an incredible community that contributes to the enjoyment of every other member of What.cd, and not just with music either.

Yesterday one of What.cd’s users uploaded an amazing set of files – three previously unpublished stories by reclusive American writer J. D. Salinger.

As can be seen from the screenshot above, the first story offered was The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls, a coveted piece some Salinger experts describe as a “superior” work.

“Of great intrigue are the works of JD Salinger which he has determined to remain unpublished,” reads a piece on Dead Caulfields, a site dedicated to the works of the writer.

“The author’s decision to withhold these pieces is a never-ending source of speculation. Initially, Salinger anxiously submitted many of these stories to various magazines for publication, but by 1950, he increasingly begins to draw them back. The term ‘unpublished’, when referring to Salinger, is but a mild indication of the ferocity with which these works are guarded,” the site explains.

Only adding to the intensity is the fact that The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls is only available to read at the Princeton library and under supervision in a special reading room. It is one of two titles bound up in a legal agreement which forbids the release of the work until fifty years after Salinger’s death. He passed away in 2010.

Of course, that agreement now lies in tatters. The stories have escaped What.cd and are already doing the rounds on The Pirate Bay and other torrent sites. Only adding to the previously unpublished works’ availability, the entire set now available for anyone to read on image upload site, Imgur.

This leak, like hundreds before it, raises many questions, both legal and moral.

As his work, Salinger was obviously entitled to do whatever he liked with these stories and following his death those wishes seem to have been carried out by those he entrusted them to. However, one has to question why even after death someone would choose to consider a work so ‘exclusive’ as to wrap it up in security and hide it away from those who might enjoy it most.

Has Salinger been financially damaged due to the works being made widely available to anyone who cares to read them? Absolutely not. Is Princeton in a worse position now that the lid has been blown off their ‘secret’ possession? Hard to say.

There will be those who say that morally the user on What.cd shouldn’t have uploaded the stories as this was against Salinger’s wishes. But isn’t the world a richer place today now that he has? If information isn’t shared and people aren’t allowed to benefit from its availability, one really has to question the point of its existence.

Whether Salinger fans are delighted or outraged at these leaks, one thing is pretty much certain. No matter what side of the fence they sit on, fans will read these stories – possibly several times over – and worry about the morals later.

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

In recent years the U.S. Government has taken an aggressive stance towards copyright infringement, both at home and abroad.

“Piracy is theft, clean and simple,” Vice President Joe Biden said when he announced the Joint Strategic Plan to combat intellectual property theft.

However, at the same time the Vice President was launching the new anti-piracy strategy, software company Apptricity was involved in a multi-million dollar piracy dispute with the Government.

In 2004 Apptricity signed a contract with the U.S. Army to license enterprise software that manages troop and supply movements. The deal allowed the Government to use the software on five servers and 150 standalone devices, and since then it has been used in critical missions all over the world.

“The Army has used Apptricity’s integrated transportation logistics and asset management software across the Middle East and other theaters of operation. The Army has also used the software to coordinate emergency management initiatives, including efforts following the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti,” the company explains.

While Apptricity was happy to have the Government as a client, the company was shocked to find out that the army had secretly installed thousands of unlicensed copies of the software. This unauthorized use was discovered by accident during Strategic Capabilities Planning 2009, when the U.S. Army Program Director stated that thousands of devices used Apptricity software.

As it turned out, the army had installed pirated copies of the software on 93 servers and more than 9,000 standalone devices. With license fees of $1.35 million per server and $5,000 per device, Apptricity calculated that the Government owed the company $224 million in unpaid fees.

To recoup the missing revenue the software company filed a lawsuit at the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. It accused the Government of willful copyright infringement, while actively concealing these infringements from Apptricity.

“The Government knew or should have known that it was required to obtain a license for copying Apptricity software onto each of the servers and devices,” the company told the court, demanding a minimum of $224,543,420.80 in damages, an amount equal to the shortfall in license revenue.

The Government eventually admitted that it used many copies of the software without permission, and after lengthy negotiations both parties have now decided to settle the case.

“After Alternative Dispute Resolution proceedings, the parties agreed to settle for $50 million. The figure represents a fraction of the software’s negotiated contract value that provides a material quantity of server and device licenses for ongoing and future Department of Defense usage,” Apptricity just announced.

Despite the copyright dispute, Apptricity expects that it will continue its business relationship with the U.S. military.

“Now that this process is behind us, it is envisioned the Apptricity and Army relationship will continue to grow exponentially,” says Tim McHale, an Apptricity senior adviser and retired major-general.

The Obama administration has yet to comment on the settlement but if a statement is forthcoming it will be almost certainly be less vocal on the piracy front, especially since the Government now finds itself on the other side of the fence.

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

Subtitle files distributed outside the United States are usually created for two purposes – to let foreign residents understand mainly English-speaking entertainment or to provide the deaf with a way to comprehend audio.

While many people get annoyed when regular file-sharing sites are targeted with legal action, an extra-special level of annoyance is achieved when Hollywood and its proxies decide to shut down sites that offer fan-created subtitles.

Nevertheless, the outrage doesn’t dissuade the studios. After dropping out of the headlines for some months, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN is now back with a campaign against sites offering subtitles. One of the domains targeted is Bierdopje.com, a TV show news site ranked 400th most-popular domain in the Netherlands.

In an announcement yesterday, site operator ‘Sypher’ explained how BREIN had contacted him with threats over the free subtitling services offered by the site’s translators. The anti-piracy group’s lawyers explained that Bierdopje must immediately cease and desist from engaging in “unlawful and illegal” acts or face a lawsuit.

In addition, BREIN also demanded an undisclosed cash payment within a week to cover the costs it had incurred so far, a demand that Sypher describes as “extortion.”

“You guessed it, we simply cannot go up against the legal ravings of this party with delusions of grandeur and overpaid lawyers, and certainly not within the short deadlines they set us,” Sypher says. “We simply don’t have the financial resources to embroil us in such a process.”

Importantly, Bierdopje is not a file-sharing portal offering movies or TV shows and before this contact from BREIN the site had never received a single takedown request from a rightsholder.

“We do no harm and we don’t harm the income of producers. We help people who do not speak the English language, plus the hearing impaired or deaf,” Sypher explains.

“Anyway, many of the series translated by our users do not even come out in the Netherlands,” he adds.

With no sensible or effective way of opposing BREIN, Sypher says that Bierdopje will now remove all references and links to subtitles in addition to suspending the translation and subtitling team and shutting down their IRC channel.

“We very much regret that a private party such as BREIN has grabbed a hobby project like ours around the neck. Furthermore, we understand that this will come as a blow to our users and translators and will create frustration but there is unfortunately nothing we can do,” Sypher concludes.

According to Dutch news site Tweakers, BREIN has sent a similar warning to other sites including SimplyReleases.com, which appears to have shut down its operations.

In July, Swedish police raided the popular subtitling site Undertexter.se, an action that outraged the so-called ‘subbing’ community. Despite the aggression, that site was soon back online and is currently operating business as usual.

Just recently the music industry in the United States also decided to renew its offensive against sites offering text related to entertainment products. During a press event November 11, the National Music Publishers’ Association announced that it had sent cease and desist notices to around 50 sites that offer song lyrics without permission.

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