As our articles in recent weeks have revealed, when browsing some of the world’s most popular streaming sites it’s becoming increasingly likely that visitors aren’t using the real deal.

Operators of streaming portals have not only been trying to come to terms with having their domains hijacked, but also the discovery that ‘rogue’ sites are operating which are identical copies of their own.

While this is causing obvious problems, TorrentFreak is informed that there is another serious situation developing behind the scenes. At the same time as streaming portals are being cloned, file-hosting sites are also being copied and passed off as the real thing.

Three separate site owners directed us to look at Vodly.to, a site that is currently trying to pass itself off as LetMeWatchThis / 1Channel. If we click on any movie link we are directed to a download page which lists many well known file-hosting sites as sources. The problem is that while they all look like the real deal, many are in fact cloned and faked sites.

For example, MovShare.me was a site created on July 1 2013 and is a blatant copy of the correct site MovShare.net, a five-year-old domain. Novamov.me was also created on July 1 2013 and is a direct ripoff of Novamov.com, a site established in 2008. Nowvideo.ws is also a fake, created at the end of June this year and a clone of NowVideo.eu.

But perhaps the most recognizable is the copying of Putlocker. The correct domain, Putlocker.com, is ranked the 307 most popular site in the world. However, Vodly.to is promoting Putlocker.ws, a clone passing itself off as the real thing.

Most worryingly, the fake site is pulling in a lot of traffic. From an early August standing start the site is now eating into the official site’s lead as the Alexa chart below illustrates.

If the clones weren’t bad enough, things took a turn for the worse when TorrentFreak was contacted by the owner of a large file-hosting site who informed us he’d essentially been blackmailed by the operators of hijacked streaming links domains.

“We have received countless emails from the hijacker blackmailing us into paying them a large sum of money in order for our hosting site to remain allowed on their hijacked site,” the admin informed us.

TorrentFreak has seen the emails in question and they do indeed demand cash in exchange for remaining indexed.

The approach, we are told, causes not only problems but a moral dilemma. While it would be easy to tell an insignificant player to go away, these hijacked sites are generating an awful lot of traffic.

“A large percentage of traffic from these 1Channel clones comes from the hijacked site, Vodly. In fact we get almost 10x more traffic from the hijacked site than the real one,” the admin explained.

The question now is how admins will react to the demands. Will they pay the money in the hope of maintaining their traffic, or tell their tormentors where to go and potentially lose much more?

Only time will tell, but what we’re definitely seeing here is the unauthorized streaming sector being turned into a messy ghetto where little is what it seems. How long users will put up with that is definitely something to watch.

Source: File-Hosting Sites Blackmailed By Streaming Site Cloners

Over the past couple of months the PRISM scandal has dominated the news, with many people calling for stronger privacy protections as a result.

While it may not come as a complete surprise that nearly all communications on the Internet are being monitored and stored, the revelations have brought discussion about Internet privacy to the mainstream.

As a result, privacy-centered Internet services such as the search engine DuckDuckGo and email provider Hushmail have seen a surge in traffic. New data shows that the same is also true for VPN providers.

Earlier this month IVPN ran a survey among 1,054 new customers, quizzing them on their motivations to sign up. The results below show that the PRISM scandal was the most mentioned reason with 28%, followed by several anti-piracy initiatives with 22% in total and the Patriot Act (11%).

Reasons to buy a VPN subscription

The mention of the anti-piracy initiatives SOPA, CISPA and ACTA is noteworthy. They all failed to pass more than a year ago, but are still widely mentioned as reasons to buy a VPN. For many, they are probably seen as a synonym for anti-piracy laws in general.

In addition to leading the survey results, IVPN says that the PRISM controversy also resulted in a new subscriber surge. The VPN provider reveals that they enjoyed a 56% increase in sign-ups during June and July. While this is a pretty significant bump, they’re not the only ones to have noticed a boom in business.

Ipredator informs TorrentFreak that they have seen a few spikes in their signups, and Private Internet Access reports a clear increase in demand that may be attributed to NSA spying.

“The PRISM reports are bringing to light the horrendous privacy issues that have existed on the internet. It is clearly the time for cypherpunks to take action,” Andrew Lee of Private Internet Access says.

Privacy.io‘s Derek Spranger tells TorrentFreak that they have noticed an increase in interest, but that a VPN certainly isn’t the holy grail when it comes to NSA-type surveillance.

“Based on emails we have received, a lot more people have been referencing the NSA, but a VPN isn’t the solution to get away from PRISM. The issue isn’t data coming from you, but where it lands.”

“I know I should be plugging the company, but in relation to this it’s not correct,” Spranger adds.

IVPN also notes that while a VPN will hide your browsing and download habits, it’s not going to prevent the NSA from reading your email messages or listening in on your Skype conversations.

“Obviously using a VPN or TOR is not going to stop the NSA from reading your Gmail inbox, so in a technical sense, using a VPN specifically to counter PRISM isn’t going to work.”

“At least the mass media coverage of PRISM appears to be pushing the idea of online surveillance into the public consciousness on a much larger scale than previous controversies,” IVPN adds.

The best solution for privacy concerned citizens who want to escape mass-monitoring is not to use the Internet at all, and throw out the phone too. However, for most people that’s not really an option anymore.

Source: NSA Spying and Anti-Piracy Laws Boost Demand for VPNs

Even with the growing popularity of the Internet the majority of users still have a tendency to associate saving files with local hard drives, optical media and USB storage.

In the past few years, however, things have begun to change. Increases in Internet speeds, cost reductions for online storage and a need to sync or share files between multiple devices has pushed us further towards the cloud.

These days it’s likely that the savvy Internet user will be using Dropbox, Mega or any one of the hundreds of other cloud storage companies around today, storing content remotely and enjoying the freedom to move from device to device without the burden of constantly transferring files.

While there is plenty of choice in the cloud, most services have a key selling point while holding back on certain features. Dropbox is the current king when it comes to syncing content between multiple devices but unless you want to pay, storage is limited to 2GB. Mega, on the other hand, currently lacks some of Dropbox’s features but offers a massive 50GB of storage without asking for a penny, all supported by industry-leading encryption.

Today we take a look at another cloud storage service that doesn’t compete head on with either Dropbox or Mega but will be of interest to BitTorrent users wanting to grab and share content with friends at super high speeds.

Hive is a product offered by QVIVO, an established unlimited cloud storage service aimed at the content sharing/syncing market.

“QVIVO is a very personal cloud media service so we wanted to try something a little more social with Hive. Hive not only gives you free unlimited cloud storage for all common files and formats but lets you create a network of friends that can share your files with a single click,” Hive founder and CEO Liam McCallum told TorrentFreak.

Of course, while storing and sharing files is all very nice, what really attracted us to Hive is the way users are able to upload content to their accounts. In addition to a drag and drop interface to dump local content into the cloud, Hive is also able to pull in media from BitTorrent swarms.

“BitTorrent is an incredibly efficient file transfer technology, and if used properly can help ease network congestion,” McCallum explains. “Consumer broadband is still relatively slow when uploading so allowing users to add content to their Hive through BitTorrent technology eases the burden of having to upload everything yourself. Instead of uploading that Linux iso just drag and drop the torrent link onto Hive and we’ll retrieve it for you.”

And it really is that easy. As can be seen from the screenshot above the Hive interface is clean and minimal. Theres a directory structure displayed on the left for keeping various types of content in order (music, movies, documents, pending transfers) and a straightforward drag-and-drop interface copes with local files plus .torrent and magnet links.

Once a magnet or torrent is dragged to the appropriate spot, Hive nips into the corresponding torrent swarms, grabs the content, and conveniently places it in your very own Hive account. If it’s a video Hive will then encode it so it can be played with its embedded video player, which is a bit like having your own personal BitTorrent-powered YouTube.

But of course, content is all very nice but it’s best enjoyed with friends and this is where Hive’s social aspects come into play. Users of the service can invite their friends into their own sharing circle where they are free to view each other’s content, listen to each other’s music, copy it to their own Hive or download it, all in complete privacy. Any files users don’t want to share can be locked away with a click.

“Hive files are in no way public. Your files will only be available to you and your trusted list of friends,” McCallum explains. “There are no public pages that users can discover or download your files from, and all pages and download links are locked and encrypted over SSL. We take the privacy of our members extremely seriously which is why we chose Germany and Switzerland as our data centre locations of choice.”

To the old school file-sharer Hive will probably evoke memories of Direct Connect hubs that allowed individuals to share content privately within their social circles. But well over a decade later things have improved no end and building a sharing environment is as simple as inviting established Facebook or Twitter friends and everyone pooling content.

Currently in its beta period, Hive is free to use with no limits although access to premium features is expected to cost a few bucks in the future.

“After the beta we’ll charge for features such as media streaming for under 10 bucks a month – but the monthly price will get cheaper with the more friends you have in your Hive, even free once you invite 100 friends,” McCallum concludes.

It’s certainly interesting to watch the cloud market develop and especially nice when a company throws BitTorrent into the mix – that always makes sense.

Source: Hive: A BitTorrent-Enabled Unlimited Cloud Storage Sharing Network

Almost every year in August, just before the start of the new school year, TorrentFreak is contacted by individuals and groups determined to do something about a long-standing annoyance.

That problem is school textbooks, their astonishing cost, and the fact that they constitute a compulsory purchase. Students must spend anything north of around $1000 per year on textbooks and unnecessary annual updates often render last year’s product obsolete, meaning that getting a used bargain is not really an option.

This unrealistic situation, every complainant notes, is down to the monopolistic practices of the major textbook publishers. In the past torrents sites have tried to do something about the problem, but this year student Tristan Lear is on a one-man mission to seriously disrupt the market.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Lear says that his mission is to take down the publishing industry and replace it with an alternative open source system.

“Textbooks and pharmaceutical meds have one thing in common: their manufacturers market their products to someone other than the person who actually has to pay for it,” Lear says.

“The publishing industry no longer has a product to sell, because modern technology (the Internet, wiki structures, etc) can better facilitate the relationship between content authors, editors, professors and students. According to the capitalist narrative, a better system or product should compete and win against an incumbent piece of crap. This hasn’t happened though, due to the position of the textbook publishers in what we now call the academic-industrial complex.”

Lear says the solution is to overthrow those in control by emulating the “hacker ethos” previously used against the recording industry. He believes that if all students get access to free books then the landscape which shift dramatically.

Lear’s baby, “The Textbook Liberation Project”, certainly has lofty aims but it had modest beginnings. When he learned in class that students couldn’t afford books and also found them regularly out of stock, Lear began offering them free PDF copies. Soon the whole class was lining up to save hundreds of dollars.

Reaction from teachers and professors has been mixed. Some were unsure of the ethics of handing out copies but also recognized the unethical business model operated by the publishers. But while some chose to turn a blind eye, others warned Lear he should expect to get in trouble. So far there have been no repercussions.

As a result things are now stepping up a gear. Lear is holding teach-ins in front of the USF campus for-profit bookstore in order to educate passing students on where they can get books for free. But in order to make himself less of a target (linking to material online could be problematic), Lear has taken his ‘pirate links’ into the physical domain.

By handing out flyers like the one shown below, he gives students the ability to scan the codes and go directly to book downloads via their cellphones and tablets.

Not surprisingly, Lear is facing opposition. A representative from USF told Lear that his work could cause issues due to the contractual obligations between the University and Barnes and Noble, the on-campus book supplier. This, however, seems to be part of the plan.

“We aim for maximum financial impact against the publishing industry and maximum political impact among the University administration and faculty. This will force the complicit parties to declare which side they want to stand on,” Lear says.

While there are certainly pricing issues, the undergraduate says that people shouldn’t presume this is only about getting stuff for free. Lear says the issue is a moral one, and his project has a firm eye on what Aaron Swartz believed.

But moral issues and open source textbook dreams aside, is what Lear is doing illegal?

“Some lawyers have cautioned me, others have encouraged me. The EFF worries that the case law surrounding my case has to do with ‘inducement’ or the degree to which I encourage infringement,” he explains.

On the other hand, Lear showed us an email from another lawyer who described the effort as “noble” and went on to ask an interesting question.

“This raises a fascinating First Amendment issue; can the DMCA — as a government enactment — be used to infringe upon the rights of individuals to simply talk about locations of open source materials? I do not know whether or not such an issue has ever been addressed by the federal courts,” he wrote.

So another year, another initiative against what is clearly an incredibly unpopular business model. So far, no one – including dedicated torrent sites – have been able to do much about it, but if Lear has his way his movement will spread and eventually the cartels and monopoly will collapse. No doubt, it’s a hot topic right now. (1) (2)

Source: Student Attacks Publishing Cartels to Make Textbooks Open Source

It is no secret that the MPAA was one of the instigators of the Megaupload investigation, which ultimately led to the shutdown of the company January last year.

According to the Hollywood studios the file-hosting site kept people away from the box office, resulting in hundreds of millions in losses. However, new data shows that this claim may not hold ground, at least not for all movies.

This week researchers from Munich School of Management and Copenhagen Business School published new data that reveals how the effects of the shutdown vary based on the size of the movie, defined by the number of cinema screens it shows on.

The researchers extended a previous paper and the new analysis is based on 10,272 movies showing in 50 countries. Based on this data they found that only very large movies benefited from the shutdown, while revenue for most smaller and medium-sized movies decreased.

“We find that box office revenues of a majority of movies did not increase. While for a mid-range of movies the effect of the shutdown is even negative, only large blockbusters could benefit from the absence of Megaupload,” the researchers write.

We contacted Christian Peukert, one of the authors, who confirms the counter-intuitive finding.

“The results of our analysis suggest that the shutdown of Megaupload did not – as one might expect – generally increase box office revenues of movies,” Peukert tells TorrentFreak.

Looking at the overall picture the data suggests that average post-shutdown revenues are roughly 12% lower. This is also visible in the figure below which clearly shows a drop in revenue after January 2012.

Box office revenues before and after the shutdown

What’s striking about the findings is that the shutdown effects are not the same for all movies. According to the researchers the negative impact on smaller movies can be explained by a drop in word-of-mouth promotion from pirates, which affects smaller movies more.

“Smaller movies usually have smaller marketing campaigns, making word-of-mouth therefore a more important success driver. If some of this word-of-mouth effect is then taken away with the shutdown of illegal content, performance of smaller movies is likely to be hit harder,” the paper notes.

The increase in blockbuster revenues, on the other hand, is the classic replacement effect the MPAA had expected. That is, people pay for a box office ticket instead of downloading the movie for free. Word-of-mouth promotion may also occur for blockbusters, but the data shows that it’s outweighed by the replacement effect

“It could be that for most movies both effects balance, but for some movies the promotional effect outweighs the replacement effect and vice versa. If the promotional effect was especially important for smaller movies with lower traditional marketing budgets, this would explain our findings,” Peukert tells TorrentFreak.

The researchers ruled out several alternative explanations and also looked into the impact of Megaupload’s demise on the availability of pirated titles. Using The Pirate Bay as a comparison, they find that the shutdown had no significant effect on the availability of pirated movies on the Internet.

“The one striking implication of this study is that it is difficult to reduce negative effects of online piracy by shutting down the supply of illegal downloads,” Peukert says.

As any study of this kind, however, the statistical findings have to be used with caution.

“It is important to keep in mind that any statistical analysis can only provide estimates. The precision of an estimation always depends on a number of factors, such as method and type of data. We therefore prefer the most conservative, qualitative interpretation of our findings,” Peukert notes.

It will be interesting to see how Hollywood interprets the findings. When the researchers published an early working paper last year based on a limited set of movies, the MPAA said the results were “not clear or compelling” and that it would reserve comment until the full paper is published.

For Kim Dotcom and his team the research is not likely to change much. They continue their legal battles in the United States and New Zealand, which may take a few more years.

Source: Megaupload Shutdown Hurt Smaller Films, Helped Blockbusters