Apple always carefully curates what type of apps people can download through the official iOS App Store.

Certain adult apps are actively banned, for example, and those that potentially infringe copyrights are not welcome either.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t get these apps on an iOS device at all. Whether Apple likes it or not, deviant developers have come up with various workarounds. Initially, those required a so-called Jailbreak, but today users have other options as well.

TweakBox is one of these alternatives. After some initial configurations, the third-party ‘app store’ allows anyone to put ‘unofficial’ apps on an iOS device. These include, tweaked versions of Whatsapp and Twitter, for example, but also emulators, a torrent client, and various movie streaming apps.

Apple and some official app developers are against this. They have taken some countermeasures in the past, which worked temporarily, but TweakBox remains functional. However, the same can’t be said about some of the most popular apps that were hosted in its sideload library.

A few days ago, TweakBox announced on Twitter that some movies apps “had to be removed,” from their site, later adding that this was not their choice.

The platform didn’t elaborate which apps were removed and who’s choice it was to delete them, but after some digging, we have a pretty clear picture of what went down.

Federal court documents reveal that the company behind the action movie “Hellboy” obtained a subpoena, indirectly targeting the app store. This court order requires hosting providers Digital Ocean and Hivelocity to share the personal details of the account holder connected to TweakBox.

The requested information includes all documents that show the name, address, telephone number, and email address, as well as payment records from the past three years.

TorrentFreak obtained copies of the letters Hellboy’s attorney sent to Digital Ocean and Hivelocity. The movie company argues that TweakBox induces copyright infringement by offering the “Popcorn Time,” “CotoMovies,” and “Mediabox HD” apps.

It’s not clear whether the hosting providers have handed over any information, but TweakBox certainly was alerted. Shortly after the subpoena was issued, the three movie piracy apps were removed from the site.

A closer inspection of TweakBox’s current video app listings shows that another potentially problematic app, MediaBox, was removed as well.

The legal pressure would explain why it was not TweakBox’s “choice” to remove the video apps, as mentioned previously in its (now removed) tweet. TorrentFreak reached out to the platform for further comments, but at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back.

Although TweakBox managed to bypass Apple’s restrictions for a long time, these recent actions show that a relatively basic DMCA subpoena can be quite effective for copyright holders.

Needless to say, many of the platform’s users are not happy. Soon after the announcement on Twitter, there was a stream of replies from people who mourned the ‘loss,’ with some demanding an immediate reinstatement.

And since TweakBox previously confessed to being a Popcorn Time ‘aficionado’ as well, the people behind the platform may not be too happy either.

While the apps may be gone from the TweakBox site, they have not been wiped from the Internet completely. As always, there are still other sources where the same can be found.

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Here’s a copy of the subpoena (pdf) and the letters to Digital Ocean (pdf) and Hivelocity (pdf).

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Copyright holders who want unlicensed copies of their material removed from online platforms are able to file requests under various laws in the United States and EU, for example.

Search engines such as Google also comply with such requests to remove links from their indexes, often doing so quickly, in many cases just a matter of hours. In Russia, however, removing links from search engines has proven problematic until a war of words in 2018 boiled over into an agreement between major entertainment companies and rights holders.

The memorandum saw companies like Yandex and other search providers agree to interface with a centralized database of allegedly-infringing content to take down links to content quickly. The voluntary agreement wasn’t part of Russian law but work has been going on to formalize its terms.

Local news outlet Vedomosti reports that is has been able to review the text of proposed amendments to copyright law, which the publication says are the result of negotiations between the largest TV companies, streaming providers (generically ‘online cinemas’), as well as Yandex and Mail.ru Group.

Overseen by telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor, the amendments are an attempt to plug perceived holes in existing legislation. It’s currently possible to have ‘pirate’ web pages blocked quickly using the Moscow Court but the only deletions of specific URLs from search engines thus far have been voluntary ones, carried out under the memorandum.

The amendments will allow copyright holders to force search engines to delete allegedly-infringing links from their indexes without going to court, and within an extremely tight timeframe of six hours from notification.

According to local sources, copyright holders will be able to hire Roscomnadzor-approved companies to maintain databases of allegedly-infringing content on their behalf. There will not be any limit placed on the number of registries in use, as long as the authorities approve them.

Once these registries have been established, search engines will be required to interface with them within 10 days to obtain the details of allegedly infringing content. From the moment new content is registered, search companies will have to delete the corresponding entries from their indexes within six hours. Registries will have to be queried every five minutes.

It appears that after months of struggling with the details, the amendments to the law have now been completed are being sent to the presidential administration. From there they will be transferred to the State Duma’s Information Policy Committee for additional work before being submitted to parliament.

The chairman of the committee, Leonid Levin, confirmed he would receive the texts of the amendments in the coming days but added no further detail. It remains unclear whether a rightsholders’ request to have entire domains delisted from search results is still being entertained.

In common with many similar initiatives, this one has taken longer than expected. The draft anti-piracy amendments should’ve been submitted to the State Duma before the end of August because the clock was ticking on the terms of the voluntary memorandum, which according to the official timetable ran out September 1, 2019.

However, it was previously agreed that the parties involved would extend the memorandum beyond that date while the amendments are pushed through into law.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

When The Pirate Bay launched in the second half of 2003, it set out to be the bastion of uncensored information.

The site categorically rejects takedown requests from copyright holders and allows anyone to upload almost anything.

During its sixteen years of operation, The Pirate Bay has always been free to use and open to the public at large. Those who wanted to share files only had to register an account, which was easy enough.

The last sentence is in the past tense, as user registrations have become a problem this year. For more than three months The Pirate Bay’s user registrations have been closed. The last ‘new’ user was added to the torrent site on May 22 and there is no sign that this will change anytime soon.

As we reported previously, the TPB team said that registrations were closed to stop floods of malware torrents. This was done in by the site’s operator, ‘Winston,’ in response to a request from a moderator.

The plan was to address the problem by putting a limit on the number of torrents users could upload in a short timeframe. That would prevent hundreds of spam torrents being uploaded at once. After this fix, TPB could accept new users again and continue business as usual.

However, after pretty much an entire summer with closed registrations, there doesn’t appear to be any progress. TorrentFreak spoke to a TPB moderator who notes that there is still no word on the issue from ‘Winston,’ who’s in charge of the backend.

“I have no idea if and when he’ll reopen them,” TPB staffer Spud17 tells us, adding that the temporary measure does limit the spam problem.

At the time of writing, the “register” button remains present in the site. However, following the required steps persistently returns the following error message: “Wrong code x. The username and/or e-mail address is already in use.“

Interestingly, closed registrations don’t appear to affect the site’s popularity, perhaps because only a fraction of the users upload content. However, every now and then a complaint pops up in the official TPB forums.

Questioning or complaining users are usually told that there is no news on the registration issue yet. In other words, prospective users have to be patient.

All of the major uploaders, who are responsible for the vast majority of the popular content on TPB, remain active, of course. This means that there is no significant decrease in the volume of new torrents, apart from those containing spam and malware.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

This week we have two newcomers in our chart.

Dark Phoenix is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the articles of the recent weekly movie download charts.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1	(…)	Dark Phoenix	6.0 / trailer
2	(2)	John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum	7.8 / trailer
3	(1)	Men in Black: International	5.6 / trailer
4	(4)	Avengers: Endgame	8.7 / trailer
5	(3)	Aladdin	7.3 / trailer
6	(5)	Godzilla: King of the Monsters	6.5 / trailer
7	(…)	The Dead Don’t Die	5.9 / trailer
8	(6)	The Secret Life of Pets 2	6.5 / trailer
9	(7)	Rocketman	7.6 / trailer
10	(10)	Avengers: Endgame	8.6 / trailer

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

When there were few, if any, legal services available to stream movies and TV shows via the Internet, pirate sites had a virtual stranglehold on the entire market.

The obvious theory was that when entertainment industry groups came together to actually make their content both accessible and at a reasonable price (build it and they will come), visits to pirate sites would naturally decrease.

In Sweden, where The Pirate Bay and similar platforms have stamped their mark on the pirate landscape for at least 15 years, the market was crying out for legal options. Now there are a few to choose from, including Netflix and HBO Nordic, for example.

However, according to anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, the availability of legal services and indeed increased uptake of them among the public hasn’t had a negative effect on the numbers of people using ‘pirate’ services.

“Unfortunately, we do not see a reduction in illegal use,” Rights Alliance lawyer Sara Lindbäck informs Sveriges Radio.

“[Piracy rates] in Sweden are much higher than they are in the neighboring Nordic countries. We are at about 20%, so every fifth Swede uses an illegal service.”

The claim that the volume of people using piracy sites isn’t reducing in line with increased uptake of legal services will be a disappointment to the movies and TV industries. However, the big question is why this is the case. Lindbäck notes that pirate streaming sites are essentially free to use, which is a big attraction but there are other issues too.

Particularly in the case of movies, pirate sites are able to exploit weaknesses in the legal market. Theatrical and other windowing (such as the often extended wait for titles to appear on streaming services) means that pirate sites are the only option for early viewing of the latest content, something that keeps them relevant, even while people also subscribe to services like Netflix.

As reported last week, a very high percentage of pirates in Europe are also consumers of legal content, which means that improved legal options should mean that people turn to piracy less. In Sweden, there also appears to be a situation where people are happy to buy and pirate at the same time, with piracy supplementing legal consumption.

This inevitably leads Rights Alliance back down the enforcement route, calling for stricter penalties against pirate site operators and greater help from those supplying Internet connections to the public.

“[T]here is a proposal that awaits the government to [make piracy a] serious crime so that the sanctions will be greater and the police will have better tools to work against it,” Lindbäck explains, adding that improved collaboration with ISPs might help to reduce piracy rates too.

Finally, education about piracy issues is often touted as a means to keep people away from pirate sites. Lindbäck believes that progress is being made in this area, with people noting that the money being made by pirate site operators via advertising, for example, is associated with crime and money laundering.

“I think there is a maturity that continues, surprisingly, about the use of the Internet,” Lindbäck concludes.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.