This week the RIAA submitted a new list of “notorious websites” to the U.S. Government, sites that the labels would like to see disappear.

The Pirate Bay also made it onto the list and the RIAA points out that despite the criminal convictions of its founders, the site continues to operate. The identities of the current administrators of the site remain a mystery to the music industry group.

“The true operators of the site remain unknown,” the RIAA writes. “The convicted individuals claimed the site is owned by a company based in the Seychelles, although no evidence has been provided.”

Interestingly, the RIAA also brings up the fact that The Pirate Bay is now accepting donations through the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Litecoin. This apparently complicates law enforcement efforts to track and seize funds of the torrent site.

“In April 2013, the site started accepting donations from the public by Bitcoin, a digital currency, which operates using peer-to-peer technology,” RIAA notes.

“There are no central authority or banks involved which makes it very difficult to seize or trace Bitcoin funds. In May 2013, the site also started accepting Litecoin, another peer-to-peer based internet currency.”

Bitcoin does indeed make it harder to seize funds, as law enforcement would need access to the computer where the wallet is kept. However, tracing where the Pirate Bay donations go isn’t all that hard. In fact, all transactions are visible to the public and we can today reveal where some of the Pirate Bay donations went.

In total, TPB has raised close to 100 Bitcoins spread over two addresses, which is roughly $20,000 at the current exchange rate. A quick look at the current wallet shows that The Pirate Bay received 64 Bitcoins which were all spent elsewhere.

As can be seen below, most recently 8.97 Bitcoins were spent on a fundraiser for a public audit of the open source encryption software TrueCrypt. Before that, part of the donations were spent on a charity rally from Dover to Mongolia. Of course, Bitcoin addresses can also be used anonymously so it’s not always possible to identify or trace the recipients.

Pirate Bay spends Bitcoin

TorrentFreak talked to The Pirate Bay team who told us that they don’t manage the Bitcoin donations themselves. They are grouped into one fund with donations to other projects, such as the PublicBitTorrent tracker, and end up in a central fund that’s managed by someone from the Pirate Party.

Considering the above, RIAA’s comments regarding the Bitcoin donations make it look much more suspicious than reality shows. But perhaps that’s exactly what the labels want to achieve?

Source: RIAA: Bitcoin Makes it Hard to Track or Seize Pirate Bay Donations

During the past 15 years or so, online file-sharing has transformed from a relatively niche hobby into a mainstream activity. As Internet speeds and file availability have increased, most Internet users have contributed to the growth of the sharing phenomenon over the past decade.

But of course, as more and more copyrighted files such as music, movies and TV shows have been shared online over the years, rightsholders have employed varying techniques to try and bring that to a halt. Their latest tool is the blocking of entire domains by Internet service providers and thanks to the efforts of the music industry, the UK will today become the world leader.

As predicted by TorrentFreak back in May, the BPI have been building cases against more than 20 sites that they say are infringing their members’ copyrights. Today that work will come to fruition when six ISPs – BT, Sky, Virgin Media, O2, EE and TalkTalk – begin blocking them at the ISP level.

The range is the broadest so far, hitting BitTorrent indexing sites, a torrent meta-search engine, a cyberlocker search engine, and several MP3 search engines/download sites.

Torrent sites: 1337x, BitSnoop, ExtraTorrent, Monova, TorrentCrazy, TorrentDownloads, TorrentHound, Torrentreactor and Torrentz.

Others: Abmp3, BeeMP3, Bomb-MP3, FileCrop, FilesTube, MP3Juices, eMP3World, MP3Lemon, MP3Raid, MP3Skull, NewAlbumReleases and Rapidlibrary.

The list is almost identical to the original list sent by the BPI to record companies earlier in the year, but has a couple of interesting omissions.

Gone from the blocking proposals are music streaming service GrooveShark and music download service Dilandau. The former now holds several music licensing deals while the latter is the third most DMCA’d domain on the Internet according to Google’s Transparency Report. IsoHunt is also absent, having shut down earlier this month.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, the BPI said that over the summer they had contacted all 21 sites with a request that they “stop infringing copyright.”

“Unfortunately they declined to co-operate in any meaningful way, so BPI applied to the High Court, where the judge considered the evidence and decided that the sites should no longer be accessible in the UK. The new blocks will come into force by Wednesday, 30 October 2013,” a spokesman said.

The music industry group, which represents all the major labels, defended its action as both “fair” and “proportionate”.

“All of the sites were given a chance to stop infringing copyright before we went to Court, and the Orders were then only made once a High Court judge had fully considered our detailed evidence,” the BPI said. “We also believe that it is fair that the people who work to create music should be rewarded when it is downloaded, rather than sites overseas that are exploiting this music without permission.”

Interestingly, when conducting a review of the Top 10 Torrent Sites 2013 as published earlier this year, after today none of them will be directly accessible in the UK, either due to BPI blocking or in the case of H33T and isoHunt, being taken offline following legal action.

The BPI told us that they accept that blocking can never be 100% effective, and that is something the team at The Pirate Bay know quite a bit about. Earlier this year they released PirateBrowser, an anti-censorsip tool designed to facilitate access to any blocked site.

PirateBrowser has been downloaded more than a million times and will be in even greater demand after today. TorrentFreak is informed that a fresh update will include bookmarks for all the blocked sites so that users can gain easy access.

Source: Top BitTorrent and Music Download Sites Pushed Underground in the UK

Earlier this month some pretty surprising news hit the file-sharing scene. After many years battling aggressively with the MPAA, Canadian BitTorrent site isoHunt suddenly agreed to a settlement with the MPAA.

The amount that owner Gary Fung would have to pay to the MPAA was publicized at $110 million, a somewhat scary quantity of money by anyone’s standards. Of course, Fung doesn’t have that kind of money and wouldn’t pay it freely to the MPAA even if he did. The amount was put out there to act as a deterrent to those who might think of opening a similar site in future, the metaphorical head-on-a-pike if you will.

But despite the scary messages and veiled threats, just days after the settlement was announced a group calling themselves the ArchiveTeam told TorrentFreak that they intended to save isoHunt’s torrent files, to save them for future generations. They had a big job ahead and a deadline of October 23 looming, the date that Fung had agreed to close down isoHunt.

Things wouldn’t pan out as planned. After hearing of the backup plan Fung pulled the plug days early, thwarting the ArchiveTeam’s attempts at preserving history.

However, in the background another project was already underway to breathe new life into isoHunt even after it had been shot and buried by the MPAA. Today isoHunt.to was launched, a site that looks identical to its now-dead namesake.

Speaking with TorrentFreak the team behind the project, who have no connections to the ArchiveTeam, say that preserving a cultural icon is their main aim.

“IsoHunt has been a great part of the torrent world for more than a decade. It’s a big loss to everyone who used it over the years. Media corporations don’t like innovative or competition and isoHunt’s fate is one of the examples of how they deal with it,” our sources explain.

“IsoHunt can definitely be called a file-sharing icon. People got used to it and they don’t want to simply let it go. We want those people to feel like being at home while visiting isohunt.to. The main goal is to restore the website with torrents and provide users with the same familiar interface.”

While there is still work to be done and bugs to be ironed out, things are well underway. The interface is completely familiar, with categories to browse on the left hand side as usual. Torrent pages appear as they previously did although the ‘time added’ box appears to show when the torrent was added to the new isoHunt site, not when it was added to the original isoHunt.

At the moment some of the community-driven modules of the site such as the forum and user profiles are unavailable and due to their nature it seems unlikely that they will return. User torrent comments are also absent but it at least seems possible that these might be recovered in a future update. Additionally, brand new torrents are also being added to the site so its usefulness will not only be limited to preserving the past.

With the original isoHunt gone there is no simple way of comparing the new isoHunt’s database with the old one but the team behind the resurrection inform TorrentFreak that so far around 75% of isoHunt’s torrent database has been restored.

“Only time will tell whether users like the site or not. If they like the idea and keep coming back we’ll be happy to develop the project even further,” the team conclude.

Update: A former employee of isoHunt.com has asked us to make it extra clear that isoHunt.to has nothing to do with the original isoHunt.com.

Source: IsoHunt Resurrected Less Than Two Weeks After $110 Million MPAA Deal

Earlier this year Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm was found guilty of hacking into IT company Logica and handed a 24 month sentence.

This verdict was later upheld at the Court of Appeal, although Gottfrid’s sentence was decreased from two years to one when it was decided that his involvement in a breach at the Nordea bank could not be proven.

In a final attempt to avert being sent to Denmark to stand trial in a separate case, Gottfrid filed an appeal at the Supreme Court last week. Unfortunately for the 29-year-old, that has now been rejected.

As a result, all obstacles have been removed in respect of an extradition to Denmark, where Gottfrid is accused of hacking into the mainframe of IT company CSC. The Danes successfully requested Gottfrid’s extradition in June but had to wait until the Swedish case was finalized.

Gottfrid’s mother Kristina Svartholm told TorrentFreak that the quick rejection surprised her. The request for appeal was delivered to the Supreme Court on Tuesday and on Friday they heard that a decision was made not to look into it.

The Pirate Bay founder previously sent open letters to both the Swedish and Danish authorities pleading his innocence, but those letters remain unanswered.

Gottfrid is now expected to be handed over to Denmark within a week, where he will face a new trial.

According to Danish authorities, Gottfrid and a co-conspirator used the hack to access thousands of files, including police records on wanted persons in the Schengen registers. The motivation for the hacks remains unknown, but the police say it can’t be ruled out that changes were made to the records.

Commenting on the case, Danish National Police Commissioner Jens Henrik Hojbjerg noted that the security breach was unacceptable.

“The police take this matter very seriously. It is of course totally unacceptable that it has been possible to gain access to police records, despite the very high safety standards that we demand and expect from our IT supplier,” Hojbjerg said.

Gottfrid previously denied his involvement in the Danish hacks and said someone else must have gained access to his machine to carry them out.

In addition to the looming extradition, Gottfrid is once again being confronted with his sentence in The Pirate Bay trial. Movie studio Yellow Bird, one of the plaintiffs who were awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages, has requested that Gottfrid should be declared bankrupt in the hope of recouping some of this debt.

Previously Yellow Bird also asked the Stockholm District Court to declare Fredrik Neij bankrupt with the aim of clawing back some funds from the Pirate Bay founder. At the time Neij informed TorrentFreak that there wasn’t much to take.

Considering Gottfrid’s troubled past in Cambodia, it is unlikely that the movie studio will gain much from a bankruptcy.

Source: Pirate Bay Founder’s Extradition Looms After Supreme Court Rejection

The best known notice and takedown process on the Internet is the United States’ DMCA law, which celebrated its fifteenth anniversary yesterday.

The DMCA has a strict set of rules that defines how copyright holders and content providers should deal with pirated content. This works well as long as all parties play by the rules, which is unfortunately not always the case.

The entertainment industries in particular often complain about foreign sites that ignore their takedown requests. While the DMCA provides no remedy against this negligence, a new notice and takedown procedure introduced in Italy will.

AGCOM, Italy’s independent Electronic Communications Authority, has drafted a new regulation that will allow it to order a seizure or ISP blockade of any website that fails to promptly remove copyright infringing content, without a court order.

Under the new rules websites and ISPs will have a 72-hour window to process takedown notices. If they don’t respond appropriately within that time-frame AGCOM will take action. The new regulation is scheduled to be implemented early next year and is currently under review by the European Commission.

The proposal, which shows similarities with SOPA and new anti-piracy legislation in Russia, is meeting resistance from various sides including consumer groups, lawyers, scholars and Internet providers who have launched a petition to curb the plans.

One of the complaints is that the current draft lacks due process, as AGCOM will decide whether a site should be blocked without a court order.

“AGCOM has introduced these rules through an administrative process, without hearing the Italian Parliament and without oversight by a court, as is the case in all other countries,” Fulvio Sarzana, a lawyer with the Sarzana and Partners law firm specializing in Internet and copyright disputes, tells TorrentFreak.

“Websites and ISPs have three days to remove the infringing works or disable access to such content. If they fail to do so AGCOM gives an order to take down the entire site or to prevent access through the IP-address blocking,” Sarzana adds.

Another element of the new regulation causesing concern is that AGCOM can compel local and foreign Internet providers to hand over the personal details of site owners, again without judicial oversight. The telecoms regulator can then share these details with copyright holders who may want to take legal action.

The rightsholders don’t see any problems and welcome the new proposals, as it will help them to deal with rogue pirate sites more efficiently.

“We believe this regulation will improve the anti piracy efforts and speed up enforcement,” Enzo Mazza, president of Italian anti-piracy group FIMI, tells TorrentFreak.

“Traditionally criminal cases are used to block sites, but this fast track will add value to our efforts. Similar regulations are already applied in the area of online gambling and antitrust, where the authorities can block sites with an administrative order,” Mazza adds.

The European Commission is still reviewing AGCOM’s proposal and is expected to hand down a decision by the end of November.

For the time being sites can only be blocked through court orders, which is standard procedure in Italy now. More than a dozen larger torrent sites, including The Pirate Bay and Kickass.to are already blocked, and last week Torrentcrazy.com and Sumotorrent.sx were added to the growing list.

Source: Italy Plans to Wipe Out Pirate Sites and Expose Owners