Late last year the 3D print website Thingiverse decided to ban 3D gun designs, citing their terms of service which clearly prohibit files used to make weapons.

In a response Defense Distributed, the people behind the first 3D printable gun, threw up a website to host the designs that had been banned at Thingiverse. This included the popular blueprints of their own gun “The Liberator.”

The worldwide release of the prints did not sit well with the State Department’s Office of Defense Trade Controls who kindly requested that DEFCAD remove the availability of the 3D printable gun documents, citing a possible violation of International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

The files in question were removed, but at the same time DEFCAD was already working on a new project that would be harder to censor. Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson had started to raise funds for a separate meta-search engine, the first to focus on 3D print models.

“In March of this year, seeing an opportunity to expand the DEFCAD concept to fight the prevailing ideas about intellectual property in the entire physible space, I split Defense Distributed and DEFCAD and turned the latter into another company,” Wilson tells TorrentFreak.

“The idea was to move away from direct hosting to employ the first amendment victories won by Google in the courts and become a meta-search engine as a more robust way of spreading and preserving physibles. We hope to build a piece of infrastructure to help stem the next wave of the IP wars in advance, if you will.”

DEFCAD raised a significant amount of funds and has now quietly rolled out the meta-search engine to the public on DEFCAD.com. While still labeled as an Alpha release the site already indexes more than 74,000 files, all stored on external sites.

DEFCAD has been labeled the “Pirate Bay of 3D printing” as Wilson and his team previously pledged not to take any content down. Those who take a good look at the site will also notice some other Pirate Bay references, including the “kopimi” logo at the bottom and the use of magnet links. In addition, many of the files linked on DEFCAD are hosted on the Bayfiles hosting site which was launched by two Pirate Bay founders.

While DEFCAD doesn’t mind being linked to The Pirate Bay, Wilson believes that the title doesn’t apply as much after they were forced by the authorities to censor their own work. He sees the Pirate Bay comparison mostly as “convenient headline writing,” which we were kind enough to make use of.

“After the State Department came after Defense Distributed and our hand was forced, I believe the Pirate Bay is still the Pirate Bay of 3D sharing. But nothing would be better than building complementary structures in the spirit of TPB,” Wilson says.

The involvement of government changed a few things, and unlike The Pirate Bay, the company has registered Wilson as DMCA agent to deal with takedown requests. While they initially received some complaints from Thingiverse users, DEFCAD has not yet received a single official DMCA takedown notice.

“There was some dissatisfaction with our public testing earlier in the summer. A handful of makers felt like we were taking advantage of Thingiverse’s bandwidth or not adequately respecting their ‘rights’ to their ‘property,’ but since we’ve appointed a DMCA agent we’ve received no takedown requests.”

Of course it is still early days for 3D printing and at the moment the scale of 3D print piracy is rather minimal. This is bound to change in the years to come, but DEFCAD’s founder doubts that it will ever compete with the size and prevalence of more traditional forms of piracy, such as sharing movies and music.

“I’m of two minds about this right now. Having grasped the state of 3D printing at the top and the bottom, I think the deck is stacked against movement physible piracy,” Wilson tells us.

“What I mean is that I don’t see the same passions being exercised to liberate copyrighted design as I see used to liberate entertainment media. This is probably obvious, and it may mean nothing for the future political defense of the physible, but I think the distinction is worthwhile.”

Wilson expects that when the ball starts rolling the entertainment industry might be the first to jump in to protect their 3D designs, as they have done already on a small scale.

“It’s interesting that the old movie and film giants were the first to issue physible takedown notices. It’s quite likely entertainment-related physibles are going to be the battleground in the near future,” Wilson says.

Earlier this year HBO was one of the first to issue a 3D print takedown request for a Game of Thrones iPhone cover. Those who search DEFCAD for the name of the popular series will see that they have plenty of work to do.

For now, however, the most downloaded files on the new meta-search engine are, perhaps fittingly, guns. With more than 6,000 downloads The Liberator v1.1 is the most popular, followed by other gun designs, the FOSSCAD Atlas SSR and DMR Shanrilivan with over 5,000 downloads.

Of course there are thousands of other designs available as well, and for the pacifist pirates out there DEFCAD also has plenty of booty.

Source: DEFCAD Launches ‘The Pirate Bay’ of 3D Printing

The idea that sites that do not comply with the Russia’s laws should be blocked is not new. Russia has been operating a national website blacklist since late 2012 and it currently contains hundreds of websites, from those promoting drug taking and suicide to those offering child pornography.

But while blocking the most offensive of websites receives little opposition from the public, Russia’s fledgling and largely unpopular anti-piracy law also introduced provisions for sites carrying infringing content to be blocked at the ISP level.

Introduced to a wave of controversy on August 1, the legislation allows for sites that merely link to infringing content to blocked if they do not take action within 72 hours of a complaint. Blocked sites are all placed on the national blocklist where they stay until action is taken, whether that’s removing copyrighted files or complying with some other law.

Yesterday the list enjoyed its most high-profile addition yet after complaints were made about content located on one of Facebook’s countless pages. Telecoms watchdog Roskomnadzor confirmed that the site had already been added to the blacklist and would be given three days to remove the yet to be detailed content.

Following speculation that the problem lay with an advert for ‘smoking blends’ on the site, Roskomnadzor said that it had also received complaints about other material and Facebook’s webhosts had been informed of the pending block. Facebook said it was not informed of any problems but the site is expected to do whatever is necessary to rectify the issue.

Artem Kozlyuk, head of RosKomSvoboda, an organization that monitors Russia’s blacklist, told TorrentFreak that in addition to sites being officially added to the blacklist, many thousands of websites are being blocked illegally due to broad IP address-based filters.

“99% of sites currently blocked in Russia are illegally being subjected to blocking,” Kozlyuk explained.

“At the moment, in quantitative terms, it’s more than 30,000 sites, but decisions under the law have only been issued against 450 of them. The remaining sites are being blocked just because they are on the same IP address as those carrying the illegal material.”

Kozlyuk says that the collateral damage extends far and wide, including operating system sites, libraries, publishing houses, plus forums and personal blogs of all kinds. With Russia set to broaden its new anti-piracy law, complaints are only likely to rise meaning that more blockades will be introduced and more sites will become blocked unfairly.

Meanwhile, a petition which gathered 100K signatures against the anti-piracy law looks set to fall on somewhat deaf ears. During a press conference yesterday it was made clear that the State Duma would not be withdrawing the legislation.

Minister of Culture Vladimir Medina said that canceling the law is out of the question.

“If we understand that there is private property, then intellectual property is the same. It is embedded with the blood, sweat and tears of the author. If we deny there is intellectual property, we are depriving the author of the opportunity to live,” Medina said.

Source: Facebook Added to Russian Website Blocklist, Joins 30,000 Unofficial Others

The Internet Archive is widely regarded as the largest online repository of free-to-share media.

The site hosts millions of public domain and Creative Commons licensed files, many of which can be downloaded through BitTorrent. In recent weeks, however, the Internet Archive has been flooded with more dubious content.

Searching the site for the titles of Hollywood blockbusters now results in long lists of seemingly pirated movies. With names such as “World War Z 2013 DVDRip Xvid AQAS” and “The World’s End full movie part 1 Xvid” it is safe to say the files in question are not in the public domain.

However, on closer inspection it turns out that these titles are not being uploaded by pirates who want to spread free movies, but by scammers trying to earn hard cash through the Internet Archive.

Those who try to download or stream the movies in question will soon notice that it’s not as straightforward as it looks. The “scam” uploads come in different shapes. Some have actually uploaded what looks like a movie file, but one that requires a special software such as the MKPlayer illustrated in the image below.

Needless to say, this is just a money-making scheme designed to lure people into downloading suspicious software.

Another trick scammers use is the YouTube video screenshot.

The page pictured below suggests that you can stream the film Epic directly from the Internet Archive, but those who click play will notice that it’s just an image which points to an external streaming site.

Whether the third-party sites do indeed stream these movies is unknown, but they do ask for the credit card details of those who are gutsy enough to give it a try.

Several movie links point to the same page at Cinemablast.info with fake user comments. When the “film” starts playing a notice pops up saying that the film was approved for all audiences by the non-existing Independent Film Rating Association of America, instead of the MPAA. After this notice visitors are redirected to the pay site.

While these type of scams are nothing new for the average BitTorrent search engine, this is the first time we’ve seen them abuse the Internet Archive.

One of the factors that may explain the increase in interest is the fact that the Internet Archive added BitTorrent downloads last summer. After this announcement several torrent search engines started indexing the site, which makes the scam torrents spread to other sites as well.

Unlike well moderated torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, the Internet Archive has yet to find a good way to keep the scammers at bay. TorrentFreak asked the Internet Archive for a response to our findings, but we have yet to hear back.

Source: Scammers Flood The Internet Archive With Pirated Movies

In 2010, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN went to court to try and force Ziggo, the Netherlands’ largest ISP, to implement a DNS and IP address block of The Pirate Bay.

Ziggo were later joined in the case by rival ISP XS4ALL, fighting the action together in the hope of avoiding a damaging precedent. Initially the court decided that blocking all subscribers went too far but BREIN wasn’t satisfied and took the case to a full trial.

In late 2011 the case was heard, with the ISPs arguing in favor of their customers’ right to have free access to information and BREIN countering that copyrights need protecting too.
In January 2012 the ISPs lost the case and BREIN celebrated victory.

Both Ziggo and XS4ALL subsequently filed appeals but in May 2012 yet more local ISPs – KPN/Telfort, UPC,T-Mobile and Tele2 – were ordered to block The Pirate Bay on the back of the original ruling.

Ziggo and XS4ALL appeal

Today the Ziggo / XS4ALL appeal is being heard in the Court of The Hague. Andreas Udo de Haes, editor of Dutch news site Webwereld, has been live tweeting from the courtroom and there are some interesting arguments to report.

The legal team for XS4ALL began with a reference to the failed SOPA/PIPA legislation in the United States which would have allowed DNS and IP blocking of ‘pirate sites’. Over in Europe, the EU Enforcement Directive is clear on ISP liability for third-party infringements and proactive blocking of communications is prohibited according to recent case-law (1)(2), the ISP’s lawyer argued.

XS4ALL went on to insist that blocking the full Pirate Bay site is a disproportionate response – even if 90% of the indexed content is illegal, many hundreds of thousands of legitimate files are now affected by the blockade.

In any event, the ISP believes that website blocking is ineffective in stamping out copyright infringement. Research carried out by ISPs and researchers has found that blocking The Pirate Bay is futile. If the tool is useless, then there can’t possibly be a need for it, the ISP told the court.

A combination of improved legal options and educational measures are a better bet, XS4ALL concluded.

Ziggo: File-sharing is an advertising channel

Next up was the lawyer for Ziggo, who began by pointing out that not only is the blockade of The Pirate Bay easily circumvented using proxy sites, but there are also plenty of alternative sites offering similar content.

Ziggo said that file-sharing had not caused the end of the music industry and that offering decent legal alternatives leads to a decline in piracy. The existence of iTunes shows that it is entirely possible to compete with ‘free’, the ISP said.

Ziggo’s lawyer said that while BREIN insists that the growth of file-sharing has damaging effects on culture, creativity and the entertainment industry, research shows that the sector is actually growing. The ISP said if there is indeed a relationship between piracy and legal services, it is a positive one, with piracy operating as an advertising channel.

Ziggo went on to underline that it has absolutely no connection to The Pirate Bay and operates only as an intermediary, yet it is expected to implement a very broad filter which indiscriminately blocks users regardless of the kind of content they’re trying to access.

The ISP added that the EU court previously held that preventive measures are only allowed if the fundamental rights at stake in the case are carefully weighed. The current blockade is the start of a very dangerous path, Ziggo concluded.

BREIN: Pirate Bay is run by teenagers profiting from ads of naked girls

After a short break, BREIN presented their case. The anti-piracy group said that despite the ISPs proclaiming the end of the Internet if they are forced to block sites like TPB, no such thing has come about. ISPs are able to block spam because their customers prefer it, but blocking a site such as The Pirate Bay is suddenly difficult only because their customers find it useful.

ISPs are in the business of selling bandwidth, BREIN’s lawyer said, but this is at the expense of poor artists and bankrupt record stores.

BREIN said that the nature of BitTorrent is clear – its users upload as well as download so are therefore infringing copyright. The Pirate Bay also infringes and represents the greatest instance of piracy “in the history of mankind” and must be stopped. Just this week it had Grand Theft Auto V in advance of its official launch.

BREIN’s lawyer said that 95% of the content indexed by The Pirate Bay is illegal and the legal content has “zero seeders and zero peers.” The site removes fakes, does not respond to takedown notices, and is run by “a pair of Swedish teenagers who turn 30 million euros in revenue with ads of naked girls.”

Countering claims that the blockade is ineffective, BREIN said that its research shows that when confronted with a block, users tend to go to other sites, an indication that the blockade is indeed working. Those other sites, BREIN said, will be targeted in due course.

Blocking is a proportional response and costs very little to implement, BREIN went on to argue, adding that according to Alexa, Google and Comscore, The Pirate Bay’s traffic dropped when the blockades were introduced and fell again when its proxy sites were hit. Surprisingly, BREIN told the court it had shut down around 200 proxies.

BREIN went on to argue that the blockades had been effective in reducing piracy and stated that previous studies reporting no decrease in torrent traffic after the blockades were introduced could not be relied upon. There had been an increase in legal BitTorrent usage, BREIN said, such as server syncing carried out by Facebook, traffic which the studies did not look at.

The anti-piracy group also contested the notion that DNS blockades are a form of abuse. BREIN said the technique was more akin to a configuration change rather than an attack on the Internet. As for the EU ruling in the SABAM case, BREIN said it had concentrated on the L’Oreal v eBay judgment. It was not asking for hugely expensive packet level filtering but a straightforward block of The Pirate Bay, in same way that the ISPs block thousands of spam sites every day.

Interestingly the judge then questioned BREIN on the effectiveness of the blockades. BREIN said its goal is to have The Pirate Bay blocked, however the judge recalled that BREIN had already admitted that people circumvent that ban by going to other sites. BREIN said they would tackle those sites next but Ziggo countered by stating that many of those sites are outside the Netherlands.

And now comes the wait, possibly as long as six weeks, for what could turn out to be an extremely important ruling.

Source: Pirate Bay Blocking Orders Should Be Overturned Under EU Law, ISPs Argue

The majority of the reports and press releases put out by music industry groups over the past several years can be summarized in a few words: “Piracy is evil and we lose a lot of money because of it.”

On the other side, however, numerous studies have also shown that on average file-sharers spend more money on legal purchases, whether it’s music or box office tickets.

The most logical explanation for this finding is that “pirates” are more engaged than those who don’t share, and that they complement their legal purchases with unauthorized downloads.

The above indicates that music piracy might not be the right scapegoat for the massive losses the industry has suffered since the early 2000s. At least, not the prime reason. This appears to be supported by new data released by the UK telecoms regulator Ofcom last week.

Since last year Ofcom has surveyed the download habits of tens of thousands of Brits. The latest data wave shows that between March and May of this year about 9% of the people in the UK pirated music, with Ofcom signaling a clear downward trend compared to last year.

The estimated number of downloaded tracks in the UK dropped from 301 million last year to 199 million in the latest measurement. In other words, according to Ofcom’s findings a third of all music piracy evaporated in a year.

The number of people who admitted to pirating music during the same period dropped as well, approximately 10% during the same time frame.

This is great news for the music industry, but neither the BPI or IFPI have cheered on the findings in a press release. It might be that they are not convinced by the data, or perhaps they too might have noticed that the unprecedented drop in piracy had virtually no effect on music sales.

While it’s true that streaming services such as Spotify are expanding their user base at a rapid pace, overall sales revenues in the UK are still dropping. While piracy plunged, music sales fell from $1.41 billion in 2011 to $1.33 billion, a hefty 6.1% decrease.

Previously, when music piracy increased various industry groups pointed out that there was a direct correlation with the decline in sales. This argument will be much harder to make now.

Of course, the music industry can point out that 199 million downloads is still very significant, and that the losses might have even been higher if piracy hadn’t declined. That said, it’s clear that unauthorized downloads are not the only problem for the music industry, and that there are other, perhaps more important, factors that explain the continuous losses.

In fact, Ofcom’s study once again shows that not all pirates are cheapskates. Those who consumed a mix of legal and illegal music said they spent the most on music – £95.31 – while those who only consumed music legally totaled £41.40.

Perhaps that explains the recent sales decline?

Source: Massive Music Piracy Plunge Fails to Halt Decline in Sales