In 2011 Belgium was one of the first countries to implement a court-ordered Pirate Bay blockade.

The action was the result of a lawsuit between the Belgian Anti-Piracy Foundation (BAF) and the ISPs Belgacom and Telenet. Through the lawsuit BAF hoped to force the Internet providers to block subscriber access to the famous torrent site.

Initially the Antwerp Commercial Court ruled in favor of the ISPs, describing the notion of wholesale site blocking as “disproportionate”. However, this decision was later overturned by the Court of Appeal and access to The Pirate Bay has been blocked ever since.

As a result of the ruling many regular Pirate Bay users switched to using proxies instead, while others moved on to other torrent sites such as KAT, ExtraTorrent and BitSnoop. These circumvention attempts didn’t go unnoticed by the local anti-piracy group though, as many of these alternatives have now also been blocked.

Starting this past weekend, millions of Belgian Internet users lost access to most popular torrent sites. TorrentFreak was able to confirm that Kat.ph, BitSnoop, ExtraTorrent and H33T are no longer accessible.

Interestingly, KAT’s new domain Kickass.to still works. This is quite an oversight as this is by far the most popular torrent site and the domain is ranked as the 55th most-visited in Belgium. The latest Pirate Bay domain is accessible as well.

Those who try to access the blocked domains through Belgacom and Telenet get a page filled with police logos containing the following message.

“You have been redirected to this stop page because the website you are trying to visit offers content that is considered illegal according to Belgian legislation. If you are the owner or administrator of this website and you consider to be wrongly redirected, you can report this by fax at +32(0)2/733.56.16.”

Blocked (large)

The notice above suggests that the blockade was implemented following a court order but this is not yet available in the public record. However, the Belgian Anti-Piracy Foundation did confirm to TorrentFreak that they have recently filed a complaint at court which targets several torrent sites.

BAF couldn’t provide more details at the moment but said it would most likely release more information in the near future.

None of the affected Internet providers has released a statement on the new blockades. It’s also unknown how many sites are included.

Whether the blocks will be effective remains to be seen. Last week a report from the University of Amsterdam showed that the court-ordered Pirate Bay block in the Netherlands had no impact on local piracy rates.

Source: Belgian ISPs Quietly Expand Torrent Site Blockade

What’s the difference between YouTube and Grooveshark?

That’s not the start of some terrible geek in-joke but a question that Grooveshark founder Sam Tarantino has always been happy to answer, and for good reason.

Tarantino, the company’s current CEO, sees his streaming product as very much like a music-only version of YouTube. Just like its Google-owned counterpart, anyone can upload content to Grooveshark in order for the world to enjoy that same material on their machines.

But as Grooveshark has made clear to TorrentFreak in the past, the similarities don’t end there. Just like YouTube, Grooveshark is very aware that some users may upload content to which they don’t own the rights. So, in common with YouTube, Grooveshark abides by United States law and when someone notifies them that a copyrighted track has been uploaded, they take it down.

YouTube’s problems with rightsholders during the past few years (notably Viacom) have been widely documented but the company has largely sorted out its differences with rightsholders and has become a valuable marketing machine and source of revenue. Despite fighting lawsuits with several major labels, Grooveshark has always believed it can follow in YouTube’s footsteps, and now there are signs that against the odds they just might achieve their goal.

Grooveshark has just announced that it has reached a settlement with Sony/ATV Music Publishing. The agreement, which puts all legal disputes between the companies behind them, sees the signing of a licensing agreement to make Sony/ATV content legally available from the Grooveshark platform.

“We are excited to add Sony/ATV Music’s impressive array of songwriters to our catalogue further advancing our mission to empower creators with the best audio platform in the world,” CEO Sam Tarantino said in a statement.

According to research from Informa, Sony/ATV is the world’s largest music publisher accounting for 30% revenue market share in 2012.

The licensing deal is the second in less than four weeks for Grooveshark. Earlier this month the company announced that it had settled its differences with EMI Music Publishing with the signing of a licensing agreement. According to Informa, EMI is the second largest music publisher with a 20% revenue market share in 2012.

So where now for Grooveshark?

Even on the back of May’s ‘consent judgments‘ no announcement has yet been made in respect of settlements or licensing deals with Universal or Warner. Furthermore, the company still has to shake off some unpleasant problems such as being the subject of a Danish ISP block and being censored by Google. TorrentFreak also asked the BPI if Grooveshark will remain a target in the UK, but we’ve yet to receive a response.

The big question now, however, goes back to the difference between YouTube and Grooveshark. The former proactively screens for infringing content based on lists supplied by rightholders and even has a deal with Universal that allows them to take down, seemingly, whatever they like.

Does Grooveshark aspire to be just like YouTube in all ways in the name of survival? Time will tell.

Source: Grooveshark Signs With Sony, Steps Over that Wavy ‘Piracy’ Line

A decade ago people were truly amazed to find out that they could download entire movies using BitTorrent. At the time there were no official video download stores and YouTube wasn’t around either.

In the coming years another revolution is destined to unfold, that of 3D printing. While the 3D printer opens up a lot of possibilities to the public it also poses a major threat to dozens of industries.

Downloading a car is a serious possibility, and leeching the latest cover for your smartphone will soon be reality. The manufacturers, however, are not going to provide these copies for free, and that’s where the trouble starts.

To address the concerns of companies who plan to offer products as 3D designs, a new startup from California has developed a DRM-type system to make it harder to copy these files. Instead of allowing customers to download the designs, Authentise will be streamed to the 3D printer, allowing objects to be printed only once.

The technology goes live at SendShapes next month and more services are expected to appear in the future.

“We’re already talking to a number of people about using the technology to enable buying of designs online, with an iTunes-like functionality,” Authentise CEO Andre Wegner told Technology Review.

While the technology may be effective, it wont be perfect. History has taught us that there will always be cracks, circumvention tools, and people who want to share unauthorized copies.

The Pirate Bay has already prepared itself for these 3D pirates when it added a Physibles section last year. However, Pirate Bay founder Tobias Andersson told us earlier this month that he’s not certain whether the site can cope with the pressure this will bring along.

“The coming copy fights will be on a totally other level. I’m talking about the 3D printing revolution. In a few years, millions of blueprints of tools, car parts, clothing and weapons will be up for download. If there is a safe platform.”

“The Pirate Bay in its current form can withstand the pressure from quite harmless industries like the movie and music industries. But when car, oil, and weapons industries and all the countries that depend on them start to feel threatened, we can’t depend on a few people to sacrifice themselves.”

Whether it will be through The Pirate Bay or its eventual successor, one thing is for certain. 3D designs will be copied, both with and without the authorization of their makers.

Authentise is also prepared for this eventuality as the company has a marking technology that will print unique identifiers into each copy. These hallmarks can lead straight back to the person who initially bought the design, allowing sellers to pin down the leak.

“Instead of hoping to stop the creation of a digitally manufactured objects, each object printed will include one or multiple identifiers that enable investigators to trace any party along the value chain; the designer, the printer, and any intermediary,” writes the company in its forensics paper.

“Inserted hallmarks are designed to identify both the digitally manufactured object and any object produced by it. This opportunity turns traditional forensics on its head. The bullet casing might act as a fingerprint leading investigators directly to the person who printed the object.”

And so a new cat and mouse game is about to begin, and history will repeat itself once again.

Source: 3D Printing “DRM” Aims to Stop Next-Gen Pirates

For more than seven years isoHunt and the MPAA have been battling it out in court, and in recent weeks the case has heated up once more.

After the 2010 District Court ruling against the torrent site was affirmed in March, the case is now moving towards a trial later this year from which the movie industry hopes to win up to $750 million in statutory damages.

To secure this amount the MPAA has to prove direct infringement and show that United States users either uploaded or downloaded copyrighted works. In addition, they will have to show that they are the rightful owners of the files in question.

Previously, the court had already ordered isoHunt to hand over download information to the MPAA, including IP-addresses of users. At the time the location of the downloaders wasn’t an issue so the IP-addresses were redacted. Earlier this month, however, the MPAA requested the same data without redactions.

After a week isoHunt’s legal team replied to this request via email, explaining that the original 2007 data was lost in a server crash. However, the server logs of the past five years are still there, and isoHunt is prepared to hand these over as long as the last digits of the IP-addresses are redacted, along with several other privacy guarantees.

“To address privacy concerns, Defendants will agree to produce the data with the last octet blocked out, designated as highly confidential pursuant to the protective order, and subject to a stipulation that plaintiffs will never use it for anything other than to identify country of origin of the users and will promptly destroy the data once the litigation concludes,” isoHunt lawyer Jennifer Golinveaux wrote.

The MPAA wrote back with assurances that without a court order it would not attempt to identify any individual website user from the IP addresses. This response suggested that the movie studios do not agree to the redaction that was discussed in a previous conversation, and a follow-up email confirmed this stance.

The MPAA is worried that isoHunt’s legal team will challenge the accuracy of the location data obtained from partial IP-addresses, and without assurances that this issue will not be brought up in court the movie group needs unredacted addresses.

“At this point, we need the full IP addresses. Defendants have made it clear that they intend to challenge the geographic location of downloading users. I have two or three times now said we would consider accepting the IP addresses with the last octet redacted provided that defendants will stipulate not to challenge the results of geolocation analysis of IP addresses with the last octet redacted,” MPAA’s Steve Fabrizio wrote.

Dissatisfied with isoHunt’s offer in response to the lost data, the MPAA said it was running out of time and filed a motion for evidentiary sanctions last week. Among other things, the movie studios asks the court to rule that all of its movies and TV-shows have been downloaded at least 2,000 times by U.S. users through the isoHunt website.

“The missing website data, which Defendants have not produced (and, in material respects, have irreversibly despoiled), would have conclusively proven direct infringement by Defendants’ users and would have been important evidence on the issue of damages,” the MPAA tells the court.

In response, IsoHunt told the court yesterday that there is no basis for these sanctions as they were willing to solve the issue by producing new server logs. In addition, isoHunt criticized the MPAA’s entire motion.

“Copyright infringement carries statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work infringed. Plaintiffs should not be allowed to short cut proving the most basic elements of their damages case based upon nothing more than bald distortions of the record,” isoHunt’s legal team writes.

It is now up to the court to rule on the request, which will also decide on the fate of the server logs.

A ruling in the MPAA’s favor means that no IP-addresses will be handed over, but it will put isoHunt at a severe disadvantage. Should the court deny the MPAA’s request for sanctions then the MPAA and isoHunt will have to reach an agreement on how the addresses will be redacted.

Update September 12: isoHunt informed us that they have an agreement with the MPAA not to hand over underacted IPs. The last octet will be redacted as “1″ and MPAA will use it only to identify the location of downloaders. isoHunt agreed not to raise the location issue (with regard to the redacted addresses) in court.

Source: MPAA Wants Unredacted IP-Addresses of isoHunt Users

Earlier this year Gottfrid Svartholm became the second person to serve out a jail sentence in connection with the operations of The Pirate Bay.

Upon completion of that detention Gottfrid stool trial again in May, this time in connection with alleged hacking offenses carried out against Logica, a Swedish IT company working with local tax authorities and local bank Nordea.

After a two-week trial the Nacka District Court handed down its verdict in June. The Court found Gottfrid guilty of hacking, aggravated fraud and attempted aggravated fraud, handing down a two-year jail sentence. A 36-year-old accomplice was given probation.

Last month it was revealed that both the defense and prosecution would be filing appeals, with the former hoping for a more detailed examination of the evidence and the latter seeking a tougher jail sentence.

That process is due to get underway shortly in the Court of Appeal and will receive a boost from one of the world’s most famous security experts.

In a move that’s likely to attract the attention of the world’s press, Tor developer and former Wikileaks spokesman Jacob Appelbaum will be giving testimony at the appeal.

Appelbaum, previously described by Rolling Stone as “the most dangerous man in cyberspace” and recently linked to an interview with Edward Snowden, will appear for the defense in support of Gottfrid’s assertion that the security of his computers was breached.

Much of the evidence in the original trial was obtained from a computer seized from Gottfrid’s apartment in Cambodia where he was detained in 2012. While the evidence found on the machine linked the device to the hacks, Gottfrid has always maintained that they were accessed remotely by a third party.

According to IDG, Appelbaum’s interview will take place next week, September 4.

As a core member of the Tor project and one of the world’s leading online anonymity experts, Appelbaum provides training to human rights groups and journalists on how to stay invisible online. If anyone knows how to access a computer and disappear, he does, and the defense will be hoping that this time round the court sees Gottfrid’s evidence in a new light.

Update: Gottfrid’s mother Kristina Svartholm informs TorrentFreak that she visited her son this morning who commented briefly on the earlier ruling.

“We don’t like you,” Gottfrid said, as he described his assessment of how the court in the original trial viewed him. Kristina told us that she hopes that the members of the Appeal Court “will like him a bit more” than those in the lower court did.

“In the Swedish system you are in principle not allowed to bring any new evidence into the Appeal Court. The court watches video recordings from lower court,” Kristina explained. “In this case they allowed the defence to bring a new witness [Appelbaum] – I don’t know how common this is.”

Source: Hacker Jacob Appelbaum to Testify at Pirate Bay Founder Appeal