Internet users in Spain are very happy to download music and movies without permission, a situation which has led the country to be admonished by entertainment companies and even the United States government.

Recently Spain has been trying to repair its image and last week the government approved a new bill which if passed will see operators of file-sharing sites jailed for up to six years.

While the U.S. will welcome any kind of clampdown, many believe that there is no legislative way out of the problem. Spaniards are used to the culture of copying and site admins will be able to sidestep the new law by moving their operations overseas.

Recently a new and interesting voice has entered the debate. Carles Pastor, a film and TV producer for many years, recently launched a brand new search engine designed to direct Internet users towards legal video content.

At first glance Beodee looks very much like the new wave of torrent and streaming sites, but this site is financially supported by Spain’s Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports. During its launch earlier this month, Pastor expressed confidence that by catering to the needs of the many thousands currently downloading movies for free, the site can help in the fight against piracy.

In an interview yesterday, Pastor expressed optimism that things can move forward but stressed a need to “totally reinvent” the movie business model to reintroduce those currently using unauthorized sources, adding that chasing down pirates and passing new legislation is not the answer.

“The whole sector cannot be dying at the same time as you see more movies [being produced] than ever,” he noted. “We should instead maximally conform to consumer needs.”

Pastor is hoping to achieve the above through his new platform. Beodee currently indexes around 6,700 feature films, TV shows and documentaries and offers a price comparison service for users looking to find content right now at the cheapest possible price.

The producer acknowledges that things won’t be easy. Spaniards aren’t exactly famous for willingly paying for content but he hopes that with a good service and fair price matters will improve. There are, however, further significant obstacles to overcome, such as restrictions on offering movies still in cinemas and pricing interference from “large North American producers” which limits competition.

Nevertheless, Pastor hopes that with increased marketing and competition, Internet download platforms and search engines like his will help bring an end to the monopoly. Beodee currently has expansion plans for France, Germany, Holland and several Latin American countries. To our knowledge no comparable service operates in the United States.

Source: Legal Movie Site Founder: Don’t Punish Pirates, Serve the Customer

BitTorrent streaming services have been around for a few years already, but newcomer Streamza is without doubt one of the most impressive we’ve seen thus far.

The service was recently launched by Polish developer and Wikidot CEO Michal Frackowiak. Michal came up with the idea a while ago when he was looking for a convenient way to watch torrents on his iOS devices and TV without all the hassle of converting files and connecting cables.

“Watching movies on a laptop on a couch sucks, so I made a small script that uses EC2 and S3 to download and encode torrents so that I could stream these to my devices,” Michal tells TorrentFreak.

“I showed this to my friends and they wanted the same thing. So there was a thought: why not to build a web app that does exactly this?”

Fast forward a few months and Streamza was born. While the idea started as a simple home-brew solution to a common problem, the end result is a professional service that easily matches up with the competition.

Streamza works pretty straightforward. It downloads torrents instantly and supports streaming playback on laptops, desktops and iOS devices. In addition it also allows users to stream content directly to their TV via Apple TV. A lot of work has gone into the user interface which looks stunning on all devices.

Rather than a lengthy summary of Streamza’s features which includes subtitle support, or underlying technology such as the multi-bitrate HLS streaming, it’s probably best if people just give it a try.

And that’s where another advantage comes in – Streamza gives free accounts with one download slot and a maximum file size of a gigabyte. No credit card needed, no strings attached.

Another feature that will be appreciated by many users is the built-in torrent search. This is particularly handy on mobile devices where it can be quite cumbersome to add torrent files manually.

In the near future Streamza plans to add support for more devices and platforms. This includes support for Android devices, Roku, Chromecast, XBMC and opening up an API to allow third-party apps.

While the service will be expanded, the main focus of Streamza will remain “simplicity” and “accessibility” according to the developer.

“I definitely want to make the Streamza experience the best ever, so even my mom could use it. It’s the primary goal. It should work and make you say ‘wow’,” Michal says.

Those interested can sign up for a free account at the Streamza site. Users temporarily get 3 download slots and can earn additional ones by inviting friends, or by buying a paid account which also allows for torrents up to 30 gigabyte.

Source: Search and Stream Torrents From The Cloud, For Free

While there can be little doubt that the story of The Pirate Bay is the most epic in the history of file-sharing, there is another that has so many unlikely twists and turns it barely seems real.

Indexing site Newzbin, the creator of the NZB format, was hugely popular with Usenet users and for this reason attracted the attention of the Motion Picture Association. After a ruinous High Court battle which left it massively indebted to the Hollywood studios, the site folded in May 2010.

Surprisingly, however, just weeks later the site reappeared as Newzbin2, its code apparently liberated by individuals known as Team R Dogs. The site immediately set about ruffling the feathers of Hollywood, actions which resulted in Newzbin2 becoming the first ever site to be blocked on copyright grounds in the UK.

Unable to maintain its funding the site eventually closed, but far from over the story is about to take a couple more unexpected twists. First off and according to the site’s former lawyer, Newzbin intends to make a comeback with new services designed to defeat NSA spying.

“We are horrified by the recently disclosed antics of the NSA in indiscriminately spying on all Internet users,” David Harris told TorrentFreak.

“We cut our teeth protecting our users from the surveillance of corrupt US corporations like the Hollywood movie studios. We now plan to bring a range of privacy services to help protect the public from governments. Our first product is a secure email service which is about to enter closed early beta testing.”

Now, the name David Harris may very well ring a couple of bells with readers. Harris was the original Newzbin’s lawyer, in fact for a while he defended the site in its High Court battle against the MPA.

However, that episode became mired controversy when it was discovered that not only was Harris the site’s lawyer, but he was also secretly the site’s owner having previously obtained 100% of the shares.

In 2012 the Bar Standards Board eventually disbarred Harris and fined him £2,500 after the Brighton-based barrister called MPA lawyers names including “prick” and “slimebag”. But 18 months later and Harris is now hoping to bring a new valuable service to the masses.

“Newzbin will be based in privacy protecting jurisdictions outside the territories of the United States & its cronies. Once out of Beta phase, it will be based in Switzerland,” Harris explains.

“We will not be complying with US National Security letters or government demands other than those from our host jurisdiction. Like Lavabit we will close rather than comply with orders violating our users’ privacy.”

Harris says that the new service, to be hosted at EncryptedMail.ch, is undergoing testing and should be available to the public by Christmas. However, despite the deaths of Newzbin and Newzbin2, there is still unfinished business with the MPA on the horizon.

“The MPA allege that Elsworth [former Newzbin creator and owner] & I dishonestly dissipated Newzbin’s assets in 2010 to avoid paying the MPA the £230,000 costs they were awarded after the 2010 trial. They say I did this by setting up offshore companies which I paid Newzbin’s remaining money into,” Harris explains.

“They allege that Elsworth and I, and maybe others, arranged the ‘theft’ of the source code & databases [of Newzbin] and then operated the Newzbin2 site and then infringed their copyrights. I deny that.”

Harris informs us that the MPA are claiming that he is none other than the infamous Mr White, the public face of Team R Dogs, the group behind Newzbin’s resurrection. To this end in late 2012 the MPA obtain injunctions against several of Harris’s companies which the former lawyer says were designed to put him out of business. Former Newzin owner Chris Elsworth has apparently settled with the MPA so will not be part of their action.

“Thus far the MPA have got me disbarred and killed my businesses but the email project is the start of my fightback,” Harris explains. “I intend to continue my fight to protect peoples’ privacy from governments. I also have other projects relating to p2p technology and Usenet in the formative stages.”

The MPA’s case against Harris is expected to go to trial in December 2013.

Source: Hounded By Hollywood, Disbarred “Pirate Site” Lawyer Preps NSA-Proof Email

Over the past year the number of DMCA takedown requests sent out by copyright holders has increased dramatically, and so have inaccurate notices targeting legitimate content.

Microsoft has been one of the most active notice senders and over the past year alone has asked Google to remove more than 10 million infringing URLs from its indexes.

The software giant has also developed a reputation for sending a lot of false notices, most of which have been sent through the French company LeakID.

This morning we again reported on some rather embarrassing takedown notices, which asked for the removal of Microsoft’s own website, its Wikipedia entry and an Open Source project. If that wasn’t bad enough, Microsoft also claimed ownership of a porn video.

It turns out this was the final straw for the company. Microsoft has just announced that it has decided to stop working with LeakID effective immediately.

“Microsoft is committed to ensuring that enforcement measures are appropriate and completely accurate. We are investigating the circumstances of this takedown and have instructed the vendor that it is no longer authorized to send notices on our behalf,” a Microsoft spokesman just informed TorrentFreak.

This makes Microsoft the first company to publicly cut its ties with an anti-piracy company for making too many embarrassing mistakes.

Microsoft’s troubles with LeakID started last year when a DMCA notice ordered Google to remove legitimate webpages from AMC Theatres, BBC, Buzzfeed, CNN, HuffPo, TechCrunch, RealClearPolitics, Rotten Tomatoes, ScienceDirect, Washington Post, Wikipedia and even the U.S. Government.

In another notice Microsoft asked Google to remove a Spotify.com URL and on several occasions they even asked Google to censor their own search engine Bing.

Hats off to Microsoft for taking a stand on this matter in public. For us it probably means that we’ll have fewer mistakes to point out in the future, but it also shows that all our previous digging expeditions have not been in vain.

Source: Microsoft Ditches Anti-Piracy Partner After Embarrassing DMCA Takedowns

Update: Microsoft ditched the anti-piracy company that sent the embarrassing takedown notices.

Day in and day out copyright holders send hundreds of thousands of DMCA takedown notices to Google, hoping to make pirated movies and music harder to find.

During the past month alone copyright holders asked Google to remove 20,497,209 URLs from its search results. Unfortunately, not all of these requests are legitimate.

Microsoft in particular has a horrible reputation in this regard. While most of the URLs submitted on their behalf do indeed link to infringing content, not all requests are correct. In fact, some takedown notices are rather embarrassing.

Last week, for example, one of Microsoft’s notices asked Google to take down the Wikipedia entry for Office 2007. As can be seen below, in the same notice the software giant also wants a perfectly legitimate tutorial on Microsoft.com taken down.

Microsoft’s erroneous takedown request

These are not the only mistakes though. The full notice includes no less than 4 URLs from Microsoft’s own website, a tutorial on Brighthub, a discussion thread on Lockergnome and several non-infringing Pastebin pastes.

In addition, the notice also includes links that appear to protect the work of others, as exemplified by the “Gay Amateur Spunk Volume 2,” “Batman” and “Taken” references in the screenshot above.

These are not isolated incidents. We reported on similar mistakes in the past, and more and more are rolling in every week.

In another notice sent a day earlier, Microsoft again requested the removal of several of its own webpages, but also the Open Source SharePoint Template Project, which is hosted at Sourceforge.

Luckily for Microsoft, Google spotted some of the errors, meaning that the Wikipedia, Sourceforge and Microsoft pages have not been scrapped from the search results. Several of the more dubious requests have been removed.

Unfortunately this is not the first time that notices sent on Microsoft’s behalf have included such glaring errors. This is troubling, especially because they are seemingly easy to avoid. For starters, the company could maintain a whitelist of trusted URLs that need a manual review before they are sent off to Google.

When TorrentFreak raised these issues with Microsoft the company said that it is committed to improving its accuracy and preventing these errors in the future.

“Microsoft is committed to ensuring copyright is respected online and enforcement measures are appropriate and accurate. We apologize when a notice is mistakenly directed to non-infringing content and take immediate action. We are committed to fixing the process that led to this result,” a Microsoft spokesperson told us last month.

For now, however, it appears that very little has changed and the embarrassing mistakes continue to stack up.

Source: Microsoft Wants Google to Censor Its Wikipedia Page