Watermarking has traditionally been used to describe a relatively ancient method of introducing patterns or information into paper. These markings are often applied to items of value, such as banknotes or certificates, in order to make the counterfeiting process more difficult.

In recent years ‘watermarking’ has been expanded into the digital domain. All kinds of digital media can be quietly marked in order to identify the origins of the content, which has proven particularly useful with the ‘dots’ to be found in Hollywood movies. By tracking these marks within pirate copies of movies, studios are able to identify which theater they were ‘cammed’ in.

Digital watermarks can also provide much more person-specific information. Vendors of digital data, such as MP3 retailers, sometimes put watermarks into the media they sell in order to identify the original purchaser. The idea is that if people believe they can be identified as a ‘leaker’, then they are more likely to keep their content close to their chests.

Of course, despite the presence of watermarks, content still manages to leak online. However, the digital watermarks in consumer purchases rarely directly identify the original purchaser of the content, meaning that anti-piracy companies have to go through other processes to get their man. A cozy arrangement in the Netherlands tackles this problem with ease.

The new digital distribution deal for eBook merchants will see them ‘watermark’ unique codes into the digital eBooks they sell which will identify a specific transaction number. These transaction numbers will be linked directly to a specific customer account.

So far the process isn’t much out of the ordinary, but the new deal will also bridge the missing link between random-looking transaction numbers in a digital file on the Internet and a real person’s identity.

The agreement will see vendors connected to the eBoekhuis platform share previously-private customer data directly with copyright holders and anti-piracy group BREIN. This means that should digital books turn up on BitTorrent networks or Usenet for example, with a minimum of fuss BREIN will be able to match the embedded watermarks with the customer who bought them.

According to the document seen by EReaders.nl, eBook vendors will be required to store customer transaction data and make it available to BREIN and rightsholders for a minimum of two years.

The problematic sharing of customer information with a third-party (who could potentially sue them) will be solved by informing customers at the point of sale that their details may be shared with outsiders if their account is linked to abuse.

Whether customers will read the terms and conditions is open to debate, but if brought specifically and clearly to their attention it’s likely that many would think twice before parting with cash.

Source: EBook Sellers Strike Deal To Share Customer Details With Anti-Piracy Outfit

On the occasion of its 10th anniversary last Saturday, The Pirate Bay sent out a gift to its users – the PirateBrowser.

Blocked by court orders all over the world, Pirate Bay is arguably the most censored website on the Internet. The PirateBrowser software allows people to bypass these restrictions.

It appears that the browser idea is right on the money. New statistics revealed today show that blocked users have been downloading the tool en masse.

Within three days of its launch more than 100,000 people have already downloaded PirateBrowser via the direct link, and the official torrent file is being shared by more than 5,000 people at the time of publication.

While The Pirate Bay anticipated some interest it never expected PirateBrowser to generate this many downloads.

“I didn’t think it would catch on so fast,” The Pirate Bay’s Winston tells TorrentFreak. “I guess people want to see the websites their governments and courts are trying to hide from them.”

To cope with the massive demand The Pirate Bay had to upgrade the connection for the download link. Even after three days PirateBrowser is still averaging well above a thousand downloads per hour.

The browser is based on Firefox 23 bundled with a Tor client and some proxy configurations to speed up page loading. It is meant purely as a tool to circumvent censorship, but The Pirate Bay teams wants to reiterate that it doesn’t provide any anonymity for its users.

“It’s not providing anonymity and it’s not secure to hide your identity. PirateBrowser is only supposed to circumvent censoring and website blocking. If we made the browser fully anonymous it would only slow down browsing,” Winston explains.

In addition to the current Windows application, Mac and Linux versions of the PirateBrowser will be released in the near future.

The anti-censorship browser is just the first tool The Pirate Bay will release. They are currently working on a special BitTorrent-powered application, which lets users store and distribute The Pirate Bay and other websites on their own computers, making it impossible for third parties to block them.

And so the game of Whack-A-Mole continues.

Source: Pirate Bay’s Anti-Censorship Browser Clocks 100,000 Downloads

TV studios should get rid of release delays, and air their shows “instantly” in every country imaginable.

For years the above argument has been used in response to ever-increasing piracy rates. However, the start of Breaking Bad’s second half of the fifth and final season shows that mere availability is not always good enough.

Just a few hours after the first unauthorized copy of Breaking Bad appeared online, 80,000 people were sharing the episode simultaneously through the most popular torrent file. After 12 hours, half a million people had already grabbed a copy via BitTorrent, and this number is increasing rapidly.

From the looks of it, Breaking Bad is well on its way to beat the record of 2,580,000 downloads it set last year.

Data gathered by TorrentFreak throughout the day reveals that most early downloaders, a massive 16.1%, come from Australia. Down Under the show aired on the pay TV network Foxtel, but it appears that many Aussies prefer to download a copy instead.

The same is true for the United States and Canada, with 16% and 9.6% of the total downloads respectively, despite the legal offerings.

In the UK, Netflix subscribers could stream the latest episode a few hours after the U.S. premiere. However, tens of thousands preferred to download a copy via BitTorrent, good for 8.5% of all downloads.

The Netherlands, where Breaking Bad actually premiered on public television several hours before the U.S. release, takes fifth place in the country rankings, followed by Poland, Spain, Brazil, India and Sweden.

sample N=4,014

#	Country	%	City	%
torrentfreak.com
1	Australia	16.1%	Melbourne	4.8%
2	United States	16.0%	London	3.5%
3	Canada	9.6%	Sydney	2.9%
4	United Kingdom	8.5%	Perth	1.9%
5	The Netherlands	2.8%	Athens	1.5%
6	Poland	2.7%	Madrid	1.4%
7	Spain	2.5%	Warsaw	1.4%
8	Brazil	2.5%	Brisbane	1.2%
9	India	2.0%	Soa Paulo	1.2%
10	Sweden	1.9%	Adelaide	1.2%

It’s clear that the show’s makers have done their best to make the show available in many territories. This was unthinkable half a decade ago, but piracy is still far from defeated. So the question remains, why are all these people still downloading through unauthorized channels?

In part this might be because some people simply don’t want to pay for a subscription. They may find it too expensive or are simply not happy with the viewing options on offer. In many countries viewers still have to tune in at a fixed time slot while many prefer to program their own viewing schedule.

Others may simply prefer the unauthorized download option out of habit. As we observed earlier this year, many people who pay for a Netflix subscription downloaded Netflix’s exclusive Arrested Development release, preferring the download experience over online streaming.

The challenge for the entertainment industry is to take away these leftover incentives, and make sure that the legal options become the default for everyone.

Breaking Bad’s latest download figures make the show one of the most pirated in 2013 thus far. Nevertheless, it doesn’t come close to the record set by Game of Thrones, which became the most pirated TV-show of the spring season with 5.2 million downloads.

While one might think that the people connected to Game of Thrones are outraged by this mass piracy, the opposite appears to be true according to several insiders.

Game of Thrones director David Petrarca previously said he believes that the buzz created by pirates eventually leads to more paying subscribers, and last week Time Warner CEO Jess Bewkes said that it’s better than winning an Emmy.

“Our experience is that it leads to more paying subscribers. I think you’re right that Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world. That’s better than an Emmy,” Bewkes said.

In other words, Breaking Bad fans have to step up if they want the show to capture the most prestigious TV award of the year. An almost impossible task, but with seven episodes to go the race is still open.

Source: Breaking Bad Sparks Global Piracy Craze

During the last decade and a half the leaking of music online has become a very common phenomenon. These days it’s quite exceptional for a new album to become available via official sources before it’s available illegally and file-sharing sites and networks are awash with content at the click of a button.

A couple of years ago leaks became so common that in all but the most unusual of cases, pre-releases ceased to become ‘news’. However, this past weekend an angry reaction by one of the world’s biggest pop stars provoked a somewhat interesting response from her fans.

In November Lady Gaga will release her new album. Titled ‘ARTPOP’, it features a new single called ‘Applause’, several snippets of which were leaked onto the Internet this weekend. Perhaps needless to say, Lady Gaga wasn’t impressed.

So while just another leak is somewhat unexciting, the response by Gaga’s fans to her apparent upset changes things a little.

Rather than sharing links to the leaks far and wide as might be expected, many of Gaga’s Little Monsters have become little angels with the launch of their very own crowd-sourced anti-piracy campaign.

It isn’t clear Who started the movement, but there are now thousands of fans condemning the leak on Twitter and various blogs and fan forums, many providing a link to Universal Music’s portal where people can report sites hosting the leaked track. Add to this a retweet of the campaign by Lady Gaga herself and things really gained traction.

The response by Gaga’s fans is fairly unusual, with one claiming to have reported upwards of 500 links to Universal, with others focusing on celebrity scalps. “Just reported a Soundcloud link and Perez Hilton’s blog to UMG,” one Gaga fan wrote on Twitter.

But despite the enthusiasm, one has to question the whole episode on a number of levels.

First, we aren’t talking about a whole album leak here, or even the leak of a full single. This is the leak of a few seconds of what appears to be three different parts of the track ‘Applause’, so why is Gaga so annoyed and why are her fans so outraged to the point of helping her to get the content taken down?

These samples represent the perfect taster – just enough to get people excited but not too much so that people don’t want to buy the real thing. From a business perspective, leaving them up makes more sense than taking them down.

Second, one has to wonder how many of the Little Monsters had the self control not to click any of the links they found, if only to test what they were reporting was the real deal. One can imagine a solitary fan, hunting down these links, thinking “just one little listen by me won’t hurt.” And they’d be absolutely right.

Let’s face it – most of Lady Gaga’s fans listened to the links they found. Of course they did. And when Gaga retweeted the ‘report piracy’ link to her 39.7 million followers, did she think for an instant they would deny themselves a sneak listen to a few measly seconds of their idol’s latest work? She may as well have cut out the middle man and pasted the link there herself.

So has any harm been done? No – absolutely none whatsoever. Will Universal spend a fortune getting these links taken down? Doubtful. Straight to number one when the track’s released in a few days? Guaranteed.

Source: Lady Gaga ‘Applause’ Leak Sparks Fan-Driven Anti-Piracy Campaign

This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

The Conjuring is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are BD/DVDrips unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

Week ending August 11, 2013

Ranking	(last week)	Movie	IMDb Rating / Trailer
torrentfreak.com
1	(3)	The Conjuring (Webrip)	7.9 / trailer
2	(1)	Oblivion	7.1 / trailer
3	(…)	The Iceman	7.0 / trailer
4	(…)	Epic	6.6 / trailer
5	(…)	The Great Gatsby	7.4 / trailer
6	(10)	The Wolverine (CAM)	7.2 / trailer
7	(2)	The Big Wedding	5.2 / trailer
8	(5)	Despicable Me 2 (TS)	7.9 / trailer
9	(…)	R.I.P.D (TS)	5.5 / trailer
10	(4)	Grown Ups 2 (TS)	4.9 / trailer

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of The Week