Pre-release music and movie piracy is always viewed as particularly damaging by the entertainment industries. When an item leaks in advance of an official product becoming available there is no legal competition, meaning that pirates scoop up what in some instances could be sales.

Leakers come in all shapes and sizes and many have been arrested in countries including the United States and UK. Some are serial leakers with so-called ‘scene’ groups but others have simply got their hands on an album via legal means a couple of days ahead of an official release.

While many of its European neighbors have, up until recently Spain had never identified or arrested a music leaker. At a press conference yesterday, police confirmed that progress has been made.

The story began on October 24 when a posting appeared on the web forum Manerasdevivir.com offering a pre-release copy of an album by Warner-signed rock band Extremoduro. For 10 euros the poster said that site users could obtain a copy, posting a photograph of the CD plus a couple of low-quality rips to show he had the goods in hand.

However, somehow the band itself found out about the offer and decided to try to stem the leak themselves. Through a representative they spoke to the soon-to-be-leaker and pleaded with him not to allow the album into the wild. It didn’t go well.

“Do not threaten to report me, because [if you do] tomorrow I will [release the album] to all music forums and YouTube,” the leaker reportedly responded.

That “cocky” attitude resulted in a complaint to Spain’s Guardia Civil who launched Operation Agila to track the potential leaker down.

The man turned out be a 31-year-old employee of Novodisc, the company hired to manufacture the band’s CD. He worked in the warehouse which backed up his earlier claims of being able to get other albums in advance of their official release. Police raided the man’s home and found evidence that the forum poster and the warehouse worker were one and the same person.

Police say that the arrest marks the first time they have been able to identify and detain someone responsible for leaking music on to the Internet in advance of its official release. But despite their achievement and swift action, they still couldn’t stop the inevitable.

On November 4 the man apparently made good on his threats to dump the album online. According to the IFPI-affiliated industry group Promusicae by November 7 the album was available for download on 54 sites. Warner Music reacted by incurring costs of 120,000 euros to get the album out in double-quick time.

“The leak of [the album] has been particularly severe because the record company that publishes it was forced to advance their release date by 20 days in order to mitigate the effect of the thousands of illegal downloads taking place,” Guardia Civil said in a statement.

“Activity in some illegal file-sharing networks increased by over 1,000 percent as a result of this leak. Mainly affected are the producers, artists and distributors, since a disk that they had invested many months of work in was being distributed in lower quality files without any financial benefit to their rightful owners.”

Without managing to sell even a single copy for a measly 10 euros, the man now faces copyright infringement charges and a sentence of between six months and two years, four years if the case is deemed to be “serious”.

In the meantime, the album – titled “For all Audiences” – has gone straight into Spain’s charts at the number one position.

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

The number of “pirate” websites being blocked in the UK is growing at a rapid pace.

This week a new High Court ruling went into effect ordering BT, Sky, Virgin Media, O2, EE and TalkTalk to block access to the popular torrent site YIFY-Torrents, as well as streaming portals PrimeWire, Vodly, WatchFreeMovies and Project Free TV.

The major UK Internet providers have stopped defending themselves against entertainment industry requests, making it a mere formality for copyright holders to have a torrent or similar site blocked by order of the High Court.

Talking to TorrentFreak Virgin Media confirmed the latest additions.

“We obey court orders when addressed to the company,” Virgin’s Gareth Mead said, noting that the streaming sites SolarMovie and Tubeplus will also be blocked next month.

The total number of websites blocked on copyright grounds is 33, not counting proxies and other alternative domains. This list includes all the 10 most visited torrent sites including The Pirate Bay, and is expected to expand further in the weeks and months to come.

Whether the measures will be successful in preventing people from downloading and watching “pirated” content entirely has yet to be seen. These are still hundreds of alternative sites still available, as well as many proxies that provide access to blocked sites via a detour.

The entertainment industries, however, are confident that their actions will not be in vain. The movie studios and record labels will continue to press site owners to take down their services, and will submit complaints to the High Court for those that fail to comply.

“All of the sites in recent actions have been asked to comply with UK and international law and have refused to do so,” a FACT spokesman told TorrentFreak in response to the recent blocking orders.

“We have made it clear that we will seek action against sites that continue to provide unremitting mass access to infringing content following due legal process,” the Hollywood group said.

And so the Whack-a-Mole continues.

—

The full list of sites that are currently blocked in the UK is as follows:

Primewire, Vodly, Watchfreemovies, Project-Free TV, Yify-Torrents, 1337x, Bitsnoop, Extratorrent, Monova, Torrentcrazy, Torrentdownloads, Torrentreactor, Torrentz, Ambp3, Beemp3, Bomb-mp3, Eemp3world, Filecrop, Filestube, Mp3juices, Mp3lemon, Mp3raid, Mp3skull, Newalbumreleases, Rapidlibrary, EZTV, FirstRowSports, Download4all, Movie2K, KickAssTorrents, Fenopy, H33T and The Pirate Bay.

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

One only has to look at how hard countries work to become Olympics hosts to know that the games involve huge sums of money, on both sides of the ledger. While it certainly bought in some tidy sums for the Chinese, the 2008 Beijing games are believed to have cost around $40 billion.

The outlays associated with the Olympics need to be clawed back in every possible way and one of the options is the selling of TV rights. In 2012, NBC paid the International Olympic Committee around $1 billion for broadcasting rights and as a result wanted to protect their investment.

Next year it’s expected that Russia will spend a record $50 billion to put on the Sochi winter games. Local broadcasting deals have already been sewn up by the IOC, with Channel One, RTR, NTV and RIA Novosti securing the key rights and other broadcasters having to settle for putting out a maximum of just six minutes of footage per day.

Needless to say, the Internet isn’t going to care about the IOC’s rules, much less abide by them. There will be hundreds of unauthorized streams and downloadable torrents of the games, from the opening ceremony through to the closing moments – and everything available for capture in between.

The IOC is familiar with the problem. In 2008 the body went as far as writing to the Swedish government to do something about Olympic events on The Pirate Bay. By 2012 illegal live streams caused the biggest problems and this time round in Russia the IOC wants to take an even more aggressive approach.

According to a letter obtained by Russian publication Gazeta, the IOC has written to Russian authorities and Olympic-related bodies demanding an extraordinary effort to rid the Internet of unauthorized Olympic content in record time.

The IOC is calling on the organizing committee for the games to create a “rapid response team” with the authority to remove unauthorized streams, links and other content from the Internet “in a few minutes or hours”, not days as is the current norm.

The adoption of a new anti-piracy law earlier in the year is an inadequate mechanism to protect the Olympics, the IOC said, as responses to copyright holder complaints take too long to process. Instead, they have a better idea.

The IOC appears to be suggesting the creation of a ‘blacklist’ of sites where Olympic events and streams are likely to appear without permission. Once on the list the IOC wants the sites to create tools that will “automatically and immediately carry out the removal of unauthorized content.”

Details are unclear, but the IOC also seems to be seeking government-administered punishment for sites that fail to efficiently remove infringing content.

When asked about the IOC’s demands the Ministry of Communications said they had not received a letter and refused to comment on “rumors”. The Olympic Organizing Committee simply refused to comment.

Communications watchdog Roscomnadzor, who would need to be involved in any initiative of this type, said they had not seen the letter but were willing to look at the proposals.

“If at the highest political and legislative level decisions are taken and Roscomnadzor receives the necessary powers, we will study this,” a spokesperson said.

By law, Roscomnadzor currently has the power to block access to any site or service that fails to remove reported copyrighted content or links within 72 hours. To meet the requirements of the IOC, legal adjustments will almost certainly be required.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, TV-focused torrent site EZTV said that they will be distributing torrents of the Olympics as they have done in the past. In their view the games should be an inspiration to everyone, not simply viewed as a money-making exercise.

“The Olympics is about people from all over the world coming together to show their skills and sportsmanship. And the IOC is purely interested in making as much money from broadcasting as possible,” the site told us.

“We think differently, we believe everyone should be able to see these events freely and inspire future sport heroes!”

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

Operating from Texas, MediaFire has evolved into one of the largest file-sharing services, serving 30 million registered users and a massive 150 million monthly visitors.

This popularity also put the site in the crosshairs of the Hollywood studios, who branded it a “rogue cyberlocker” last year. Shocked by this characterization, MediaFire emphasized that it has always cooperated with rightsholders by taking down infringing content.

At the same time the company worked hard behind the scenes to expand its service into more than just a plain old file-sharing platform. Today MediaFire is ready to reveal the fruits of this effort to the world, with the release of its desktop syncing application and an overhaul of its website.

The sync software allows Mac and Windows users to back up the files stored in their MediaFire account directly to their computers. This means that with up to 50 gigabytes of free storage, MediaFire now is a direct competitor of other cloud hosting services such as Dropbox and Google Drive.

MediaFire desktop sync (large)

One of the advantages of the sync application is that it allows users to share files directly from their hard drive. For example, people can put audio and video files in their MediaFire folder and get a link to share these with a friend, a group of friends, or the public at large.

To make sharing more convenient, MediaFire has also overhauled its web interface. The service now supports automatic media file transcoding and streaming support guarantees that over 200 file formats can be viewed directly from a web browser.

Besides streaming, users can download a copy of the files to their computers as well, as this example shows.

MediaFire streaming support (large)

While the above are already major changes, it is just the beginning for the ambitious file-sharing service. The ultimate goal of MediaFire is to make sharing and discovering content easy and convenient across a variety of platforms through the new API.

Brent Bucci, MediaFire’s Vice President of Brands and Developer Relations, informs TorrentFreak that MediaFire’s API will open doors to video playback on other platforms, including Xbox, Playstation and Smart TV.

After the launch of the desktop sync application MediaFire plans to add sync support for mobile devices early next year. A few months later the service will also add search capability, which will make it easier for the public to find files that others share, much like YouTube.

MediaFire’s new web interface (large)

The timing of MediaFire’s new sync tools announcement is interesting as it comes days before Kim Dotcom’s Mega is expected to release similar applications. However, according to MediaFire this is a mere coincidence.

“We haven’t seen ourselves a competitor to Mega,” Bucci says, explaining that MediaFire has chosen to focus on the social sharing aspect rather than encryption.

“Encryption is very hard to do, and at the end of the day really good security, transparent policies and not pissing off the powers that be, are all essential parts to running a cloud service that can be trusted,” Bucci says

Dropbox, one of the most used file-syncing tools, is not a competitor MediaFire worries about either, as storage is much more expensive there. “If people want two gigabytes of storage, perhaps Dropbox is right for them,” Bucci says.

MediaFire users can store a maximum of 50 gigabytes with a free account (starting with 10 GB), and paid subscriptions start at $4.99 a month for 100 gigabytes.

Finally, the topic of online piracy can’t be ignored. When MediaFire adds discovery tools it may also become easier to find infringing content being shared on the service, something which has the potential to raise eyebrows in the entertainment industry.

“Of course, dealing with piracy and fair-use is a balancing act. We’ve developed some pretty innovative tools in order to identify pirated content, while at the same time, we are committed to protecting our users’ data and media,” Bucci says.

However, instead of focusing on the negative MediaFire prefers to highlight the advantages of sharing. Many musicians and even major labels and movie studios are beginning to realize that sharing can also have benefits, and this is exactly what MediaFire wants to excel at.

“The industry is changing, and entertainment companies and artists are beginning to see clear advantages when it comes to providing free content to their fans. Remixes, mash-ups, and social promotions are creating a new generation of artists that understand their fans,” Bucci concludes.

Those interested in the new MediaFire and its fresh streaming support and sync tools can check it out here.

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

Following the launch of the first Pirate Party in Sweden the “Pirate” movement quickly spread all over the world, and not without success.

During the German elections earlier this year nearly a million people voted for the local Pirate Party, in Iceland the national Parliament has three Pirate MPs, and the Swedish branch of the Pirates currently has two seats at the European Parliament.

To coordinate the international agenda Pirate Parties International (PPI) was founded in 2010. The organization currently represents the interests of 43 parties worldwide, from China to Chile.

One of the goals of the umbrella organization is to facilitate international operation with other global organizations, to monitor and influence the political agenda. This week PPI took a big step towards this goal when it was granted observer status for the upcoming meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Bali.

The WTO Secretariat approved the application of the international Pirate organization, which means that it can participate in WTO conferences and related meetings. Observer status also allows PPI to submit papers to be circulated among WTO members.

Previously PPI was denied observing member status at the World intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) after several member states, including the United States, objected to its application.

Gregory Engels, Co-Chairman of PPI, says they have already sent a new application to WIPO, and he hopes that the recent developments will help the group to get accepted there as well.

“One of WIPO’s points of critique was that they were not aware of any existing cooperations between UN bodies and international political organizations. By being admitted to the WTO meeting we have created such a precedent. This is definitely a door opener for us,” Engels tells TorrentFreak.

In addition to WTO and WIPO, Pirate Parties International hopes to join various other UN organizations to raise their profile. The status as WTO observer is definitely a breakthrough, but also just the beginning.

“Overall I think that we need more connections with other international global players – NGOs and academia. By being admitted to Bali we have the chance to deepen those relationships and gain visibility,” Engels says.

“I consider the WTO conference an accolade for us in the field of international lobbying, and a door opener to more international participation,” he concludes.

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