As one of the largest Internet providers in the United States, Comcast is alerted to the existence of pirating customers on a daily basis.

When the provider receives DMCA notices it is required to forward them to the customers in question, and if the copyright holder is part of the six-strikes Copyright Alert System the notice results in an official ‘strike’.

The above is nothing new, but the situation gets more complex when it comes to the effects these DMCA notices have on the long term. Although those participating in the six-strikes system have made it very clear that no accounts will be terminated, outside the program it is certainly an option.

TorrentFreak has received information suggesting that Comcast is actively terminating the accounts of repeat infringers under certain circumstances, without a court order. When we asked the ISP about their policy with regard to repeat copyright infringers, this was confirmed.

“Termination is a requirement of the DMCA and applies to all ISPs, not just Comcast, as a consequence of repeated and egregious copyright infringement,” a Comcast spokesperson told TorrentFreak.

Comcast is indeed correct in stating that Internet providers have to act against repeat infringers. The DMCA requires ISPs to “… adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders of the service provider’s system or network who are repeat infringers.”

However, legal experts and Internet providers interpret the term “repeat infringer” differently. For example, AT&T previously said that it would never terminate accounts of customers without a court order, arguing that only a court can decide what constitutes a repeat infringement.

Comcast, however, informs TorrentFreak that a court order is certainly not required under the DMCA and that the company’s interpretation of the law is appropriate.

Comcast is not the only company to take this stance. Verizon’s terms of service also suggest that account termination is an option, without due process. Similar policies are also applied by other service providers, such as YouTube for example. Needless to say, terminating an Internet connection will have more impact than shutting down a YouTube account.

While the DMCA has been in place for more than a decade, the launch of the Copyright Alert System puts the repeat infringer issue in a new light. Previously, ISPs were not obliged to keep logs of copyright infringement notices for a set period of time, but under the new system they are.

In addition, as part of the alert system ISPs are required to track the number of notices “repeat infringers” receive. This means that providers are keeping a database of the most persistent pirates, which outside of the CAS can lead to terminations in Comcast’s case.

Comcast assured TorrentFreak that “termination of a customer’s Internet service is not part of the Copyright Alert System,” but didn’t deny that these notices can eventually lead to account terminations under the ISP’s acceptable use policy.

Under what circumstances this would take place, and how Comcast defines “repeated and egregious” copyright infringement, remains unknown for now.

Source: Comcast Terminates Accounts of Persistent Pirates

Speaking with TorrentFreak in July 2012, Australian adult industry businessman Robert King outlined a mission he’d initiated a few weeks earlier.

“What I hope to achieve is very simple. I want to tear apart the illegal file locker industry by removing its supply of funds and then ultimately removing its supply of network connectivity,” King explained.

Over the months that followed King kept up the pressure. With a team of people (he has never revealed its exact size or membership), King sought out infringing files on hosting sites and used their existence to build up a picture that sites were acting illegally.

Then, using contacts he had built in the payment processing sector, AdultKing (as King is known online) began to hit file-hosting sites in the pocket by reporting them to the likes of PayPal, Visa, Mastercard and a variety of intermediate processors. The aim: to cut sites off from their cash.

For some sites the results were extremely problematic. With no options to process payments, file-hosting sites were not only unable to accept money for user subscriptions, but also had problems sending money out, meaning that server bills went unpaid. Worse still, some who had problems with PayPal due to King’s work found their funds frozen for six months, a situation that proved terminal for some fringe players.

Some 90 days into the StopFileLockers campaign, King said he had played a part in 194 sites having their payments interrupted and the total shutdown of 54 others.

There can be little doubt that among King’s targets were sites designed from the ground up to profit from infringing content and for this he gained both moral and financial support from his industry peers. However, in January 2013 King began attacking the payment processing abilities of Kim Dotcom’s brand new Mega.co.nz, the most-scrutinized file-hosting startup in tech history.

There was no way that Mega would do anything to break the law, yet King was determined to harass the company. He failed, Mega continued to grow, and the moral high-ground of the StopFileLockers campaign had been damaged by going after a law-abiding company going about its 100% legitimate business.

In the months that followed King continued his work, although with less fanfare than in the early days. However, a lowered profile did nothing to improve his standing in file-sharing circles. King is almost certainly the most-hated man in the file-hosting business today, which some will attribute to his successes over the past 15 months.

King himself believes that his contribution has been significant, with the suggestion that the StopFileLockers campaign has played a part in the shutdown of hundreds of piracy-related sites and the closure of thousands of PayPal, Payza, Moneybookers and other payment processing options. No official stats or reports are available but it’s safe to say that the project has been a considerable nuisance to the file-hosting market.

However, it’s now clear that King’s work is on the brink. Despite initial enthusiasm and support (including hard cash from industry giant Manwin), interest in the project has waned considerably. In an update to adult industry platform GFY, King announced today that StopFileLockers has run out of money and resources and will shut down this week.

“Unfortunately at the end of September we finally ran out of funds and the resources just don’t exist to keep this effort going any longer. In fact, we now face a deficit in the vicinity of $15,000,” King said.

“Unless a source of funding is found, all operational aspects of the Stop File Lockers project and Copy Control will cease at midnight on Friday 4th October (AEST). I would like to thank every person, company and organization that has provided support (financial and otherwise) to the project.”

So what now for AdultKing? More anti-piracy work, or an unlikely change of sides perhaps?

“Overnight one of the largest remaining file lockers offered me $XXX,XXX a year to come on board as a consultant and help them become compliant and get their PayPal account back,” King revealed in September.

“I told them to get fucked.”

In the absence of any figures to show success or failure it is very difficult to assess the real-world achievements of the campaign, at least as far as it may or may not have boosted sales of official content. However, King’s legacy may lie in a more significant area – adding momentum to the shifting of payment processor attitudes towards the file-sharing space.

“We have recast the way in which file lockers are viewed by many organizations,” King concludes.

Few will argue with that.

Update:

“More than one file locker operator has offered either incentive or threat to help them, or desist from working to mitigate their business model. There is no price at which a piracy outfit can obtain my services,” King informs TorrentFreak.

“At the conclusion of the Stop File Lockers project I shall be concentrating my efforts on my mainstream business interests which are not associated with either anti-piracy or the adult industry.”

Source: StopFileLockers Anti-Piracy Outfit Announces Imminent Shutdown

When it comes to pirating movies and TV-shows Australia is consistently listed as one of the top countries, despite its relatively small population of 22 million people.

Considering the above, it doesn’t come as a big surprise that a new study found that one in four Australians pirates movies and TV-shows.

The research in question was commissioned the local Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation (IPAF), a movie industry outfit which also lists the MPA(A) and the Hollywood-funded AFACT on its board.

IPAF uses the results to conclude that “pirating is not the social norm.” What they mean to say is that not 100% of the population pirates, but then again, not everyone is interested in movies or TV-shows to begin with.

Teens between the ages of 16 and 17 pirate the most (31%) and nearly twice as much as those between 12-13 years old (17%). A quarter of all adults also admit to pirating a movie or TV-show at least once per month, and 11% downloads or streams illegal content at least once a week.

In addition to showing how prevalent piracy is in Australia, the research also asked respondents about the advertisements they see on pirate sites. The results reveal that most pirates recall gambling (51%) and sex related (44%) ads.

This leads IPAF to conclude that pirate sites “provide a store front for the gambling and sex industries.” Teens are exposed to these ads as well and the group warns parents of the hazardous effects these banners can have on their children.

“Parents need to be aware that children who access illegal sites to download unauthorized movies and TV shows may be exposed to graphic pornographic advertisements, unregulated gambling sites, scams and viruses,” the report reads.

The report further finds that more than half of all Australians (55%) supports blocking access to pirate websites. Even among persistent pirates, 44% are in favor of website blocking, a result that will obviously be used in ongoing lobbying efforts to block pirate sites Down Under.

Finally, the report suggests that the majority of all pirates are immoral cheapskates. When given the choice between a legal alternative and piracy, pirates often choose the latter.

“The primary motivator for Australians of all ages pirating movies and TV shows is that it is free. The argument for free content overshadows their moral and ethical concerns,” the report reads.

Interestingly, this is a biased interpretation of what the data shows.

As can be seen above, respondents were asked what they would do if their favorite TV-show was available for $2.99. More than half (54%) of the persistent pirates answered that they would still pirate it while 28% said they would pay.

It’s clear that many people would indeed continue to pirate, but the research didn’t actually ask why.

Perhaps the results would have been different if the TV-show was covered by an $8 monthly subscription or if it was more competitively priced? Adding to that, money is not the only factor – it was previously revealed that many people continue to pirate even after they pay for a Netflix subscription.

The questioning is misleading in this case, to say the least, and the other responses clearly illustrate this. Why else would 22% of the lapsed downloaders and 5% of the non-downloaders suddenly start pirating when a legal option becomes available?

Nevertheless, spearheaded by Hollywood, Australia can prepare itself for yet another push for stricter legislation to deal with these freeloading pirates.

Source: One in Four Australians Are ‘Cheap’ Movie Pirates

The United States Trade Representative, the MPAA and in particular the RIAA/IFPI have very few positive things to say about vKontakte.

The social networking giant allows its 40 million daily users to upload their music collections meaning that the site has become one of the world’s largest sources of unauthorized music to be found anywhere on the planet.

Making matters worse for the labels is that content stored on vKontakte has often been made available for download through numerous other apps and websites utilizing the company’s API.

As a result vKontakte has been branded a “notorious market” by the USTR and put under pressure by the likes of the IFPI, who say that the huge Internet business has built itself up on infringing content. Following years of inaction, there are now signs that vKontakte is beginning to listen.

In June 2013 before the implementation of Russia’s new anti-piracy law, reports surfaced that music was becoming harder to find on vKontakte with results for some leading artists drawing blanks.

The company put this down to copyright holders sending many more takedown notices than ever before. Indeed, it soon became apparent that some companies had previously been given moderator access to remove their content from vKontakte directly. Nevertheless, rumors began to circulate that vKontakte might have deployed some other kind of anti-piracy system.

The company has since admitted that it has developed a technology designed to stop users from uploading content that has previously been marked as infringing.

“For each track which receives a copyright holder complaint we create an acoustic impression,” said vKontake spokesperson Lobushkin George. “Downloading the exact same copy will be difficult.”

The system is not without its flaws. One local artist, Noize MC, complained that he would like to make his music available on the social network but since someone already marked someone else’s upload as infringing, the system now bans him from doing so. Another artist, DJ Dmitry Diamonds, said that after sending in a complaint of someone infringing his copyrights his own uploaded music disappeared from his official page.

But despite the teething problems, it appears that vKontakte intends to expand the system.

According to content owners who spoke with Izvestia, vKontakte will now introduce fingerprinting in order to tackle infringing video uploads at source. Representatives from the social networking site declined to comment but sources at several media companies suggest that the the anti-piracy system will be similar to YouTube’s Content ID.

At least three media companies have struck deals with vKontakte to publish their content legally on the networking site alongside the ability to remove infringing content with fingerprinting.

“There is currently only one type of interaction: illegal content is removed in response to a request from us,” said deputy general director of CTC Media Sergei Petrov. “We look forward to the new tool, as it can greatly facilitate the fight against pirates.”

According to Amedia president Alexander Akopova the fingerprinting technology was vKontakte’s idea. It will remove the need to constantly search the site for illicit content and will also eliminate problems caused by users renaming files.

“The management of VKontakte made the right move by creating such a system,” says Akopov. “I am glad that it was their own initiative.”

Wide agreements on a filtering and takedown system with copyright holders will help vKontakte avoid many of the perils of the new anti-piracy law introduced August 1. Currently the social networking site can be bombarded with complaints which have the potential to take the site offline if not properly handled, but formal agreements might be enough to keep rightholders happy.

It’s even possible that these moves will be enough to appease the USTR, IFPI and MPAA. Finding out should be just a few months away.

Source: Russia’s Facebook Prepares YouTube-Style Anti-Piracy Filter

Over the past months the revelations of Edward Snowden have dominated the news.

Internet privacy suddenly became a mainstream topic and all the negative news has increased the demand for encrypted and secure communications.

Responding to this, several developers quickly jumped in with new tools to prevent the public from having their conversations spied on or their data breached. Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde announced a new encrypted messaging service for example, and Kim Dotcom’s Mega has similar plans.

Today BitTorrent Inc. announced a new project that will also increase people’s security. The San Francisco-based company just launched BitTorrent Chat, a secure messenger app that allows people to communicate without storing the conversations on any central servers.

The new tool is based on BitTorrent technology and is offered free of charge to help people regain complete control over their own data.

“This year alone, more than 6 million people have been impacted by data breaches. The right to own your own conversations online: it’s not a given. It should be,” the company says.

“So over at Labs, we’re working on something that could solve for conversation security. BitTorrent Chat applies distributed technology to the idea of IM. Our goal is to ensure that your messages stay yours: private, secure, and free.”

While BitTorrent Chat doesn’t store any conversations on a third-party server, it does need a central location to get the conversation going. To speak in BitTorrent terms, people have to connect to a tracker to know where the message should be sent.

TorrentFreak asked for further details on what central servers are involved in bootstrapping the conversations and what encryption the new tool uses, but the company could not immediately provide further details on these issues.

The new messenger app is not the only ‘breach safe’ tool the company is currently working on. Earlier this year BitTorrent launched its Sync application which provides a secure alternative to centralized cloud backup solutions such as Dropbox and Google drive.

Those who want to give BitTorrent’s Chat application a try can head over to BitTorrent Labs to sign up for the private Alpha.

Source: BitTorrent Launches ‘NSA-proof’ Serverless Messenger App