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.
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Copyright holders are increasingly demanding that ISPs should block access to pirate sites in order to protect their business.
This is also the case in Australia, where blocking injunctions were made possible four years ago following amendments to copyright law.
The orders are requested under Section 115a of Australia’s Copyright Act. This allows copyright holders to apply for injunctions to force ISPs to prevent subscribers from accessing ‘pirate’ sites.
Over the past two years, many of the world’s largest torrent and streaming sites have already been blocked, but the work is far from done. A new application recently submitted at the Federal Court of Australia requests ISPs to block dozens of websites.
The complaint comes from Village Roadshow as well as several other prominent movie companies such as Disney Enterprises and Universal City Studios. For the first time, Netflix Studios has joined in as well, as Computerworld notes.
Netflix’s involvement doesn’t really come as a surprise as the streaming giant has gradually expanded its anti-piracy efforts of the years. It joined the Alliance For Creativity and Entertainment, for example, as well as the MPAA.
The list of targets identified in the complaint includes a wide variety of sites, including the torrent sites BitTorrent.am and HD-torrents.org, streaming portals Yo-movies.com and Afdah.com, as well as several release blogs such as Scene-rls.com and Crazy4tv.com.
In total, the injunction lists 86 sites, which are operating from a total of 137 domain names.
Interestingly, the court order has a strong focus on Asian content. Several of the targeted sites, such as BTBTT and 123kubo.org, are predominantly popular in Asian countries. In addition, the list also includes many anime sites such as Animeultima.to and Ryuanime.com.
The latter is likely due to the fact that the Australian distribution group Madman Anime Group is listed as one of the applicants as well.
According to the movie outfits, these sites really only have one purpose. That is, to allow their visitors to download, stream or otherwise access copyrighted content.
“The primary purpose of the Target Online Locations is to infringe or facilitate the infringement of copyright,” the application reads.
“[T]he owners or operators of the Target Online Locations demonstrate a disregard for copyright generally, in that they provide easy access to the copyright works of others, sometimes in exchange for money, and sometimes on a free basis,”
The list of ISPs that requested to set up the blockades includes Telstra, Optus, Vocus, TPG, Vodafone, and several subsidiaries. If granted, the measures will have to be implemented through DNS blocking, IP-address blocking, or any other means agreed with the rightsholder.
The application follows a well-defined format and considering the movie companies’ previous efforts, the blocking order will likely be granted.
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List of all sites and URLs requested to be blocked.
Every week, millions of pirates head off to popular torrent sites for their software fix.
Whether they’re looking for the latest operating systems, graphics tools, or DVD/Blu-ray burning software, most things are available for free download.
What most people never question is why these tools are available for free and indeed, who puts them online. Today we can put a little meat on those bones.
We recently spoke with Thumper, aka ThumperTM, one of the longest-standing uploaders on public torrent sites like The Pirate Bay and 1337x. But this isn’t just any uploader. Thumper is responsible for almost 1,000 torrent uploads over the past nine years, leading to millions of downloads across the Internet.
Thumper identifies as female (impossible to confirm, but we’ll proceed on that basis) and sports the profile picture as seen top right. It’s an image used by many Internet users so probably isn’t an accurate depiction. Thumper also claims to be from Switzerland but in this game, such ‘facts’ should be taken with a pinch of salt alongside a knowingly obvious nod to security.
What cannot be denied, however, is the popularity of Thumper’s torrents. If we take her Microsoft Office Pro Plus 2016 release as an example, that has received more than 801,000 downloads on 1337x alone.
801,864 downloads on 1337x alone
“This torrent has been download a few million times from all sites, because Office is one of the must-have programs for most of us,” Thumper informs TF.
Of course, not all torrents are this popular but Thumper’s history goes back around 14 years, when torrents weren’t even a priority for her. Things began on so-called “one-click” hosting sites in 2005, with a progression to torrents in 2007.
“I started uploading torrents at H33t, Demonoid, 1337x, ThePirateBay, and RARBG. Then I started my own site in 2010 (ThumperDC.com and TechTools.NET). Now all of those sites redirect to our legit Windows forum, TheWindowsForum.com,” she explains.
Over the past 12 years, Thumper’s torrents (mainly Windows software uploads) have spread far and wide. She has been uploading on The Pirate Bay since April 2010 and on that site alone has a confirmed 946 torrents, as the private user panel screenshot below shows.
946 torrents at the time of writing
The Pirate Bay is obviously a very high-profile site but Thumper is a bit of a celebrity elsewhere too.
More than nine years ago she joined 1337x and for the last eight has been a trusted moderator there. In the interim, Thumper was also an uploader at the now-defunct original KickassTorrents, but still continues over at that platform’s namesake, KATCR.
Uploading and seeding so many torrents is a big undertaking, especially over a large number of years. There’s also a bit of a stigma attached to software uploads because unlike movies and TV shows, they have the potential to contain a virus or malware.
However, since reputations can be gone in a flash if an uploader lets something nefarious slip through the net, Thumper says that precautions are carried out in advance. Most uploaded software is obtained from friendly crackers (people who remove copy protection) before being run through a virtual machine and then scanned for viruses. Only then is it uploaded.
This perhaps contributed to Thumper earning a “green skull” from The Pirate Bay team around 2011, which is a small logo next to a user name which informs potential downloaders that while releases aren’t guaranteed to be flawless, they are more trusted than others without.
This is particularly important when one considers that people sometimes try to masquerade as Thumper in order to gain traction. We independently confirmed her status on one of the torrent sites she uploads to but most people don’t have that luxury so should proceed with caution when seeing her ‘brand’ online.
“The Pirate Bay has a ton of fake uploads lately, even some of them are infected and uploaded by other users with our tag ‘Windows app name v1.0 [ThumperDC] or [TechTools] or [TheWindowsForum]’, for example,” Thumper explains.
“1337x has other rules for new uploaders, you must apply for uploader status, then we review and decide if x_User is legit. People should always use torrent sites which are safe: 1337x, TPB, KATCR, RARBG, or TorrentGalaxy. And make sure to download from trusted uploaders.”
Finally, one of the biggest questions is why someone like Thumper keeps releasing torrent after torrent, year after year. What’s in it for her?
Each release does contain links to her own site (which now specializes in discussions and technical support for Windows software), so there’s obviously some benefit there. However, she insists that this isn’t the main motivation.
“Sharing is caring,” she concludes, citing the years-old ‘pirate’ mantra.
Netflix, like many other rightsholders, keeps a close eye on pirate sites.
The company has its own in-house anti-piracy team and also works with third-party companies, to issue takedown requests.
Over the past two years, the streaming giant has sent more than five million of these to Google alone. Many of them ask the search engine to remove links to pirate sites, but this week our eye was drawn to a more unusual request.
The notice in question was sent by the anti-piracy outfit Marketly, on behalf of Netflix, and identifies 250 URLs which presumably link to pirated copies of the movie “Triple Frontier.” However, on closer inspection, many of the reported links are not infringing at all.
The most obvious mistake is that the notice reports Netflix’s own listing of “Triple Frontier” as a pirate copy, requesting Google to remove it from its search index.
Google spotted the mistake and didn’t comply. However, that’s not the only error. The same takedown request also includes a variety of links to other legitimate websites. This article from The Wrap about Netflix’s streaming numbers for example, which mentions Triple Frontier, but isn’t piracy related.
The same is true for several other reported URLs. This includes a Hollywood Reporter story, this top ten list from Variety, this article from The Daily Dot, a Business Insider report, and IMDb’s news page for Triple Frontier. We could go on and on.
These findings could easily be used to once again argue that automated DMCA takedown processes are highly inaccurate. After all, if Google wasn’t sharp enough to spot these errors, legitimate content would have disappeared from the search results.
However, since we have seen our fair share of imposters over the past year, we’re not sure that this notice was sent by Marketly at all, or if Netflix has anything to do with it.
Marketly indeed works for Netflix and the streaming service does own the distribution rights to Triple Frontier. However, neither company is known for its negligence when it comes to these types of takedown efforts, although Marketly took down one of our tweets recently.
Upon closer inspection, our doubts started to grow. For one, the Marketly that sent this takedown requests has a separate listing in Google’s transparency report.
In addition, there have been other Marketly imposters recently. For example, Google has flagged this copycat as being fraudulent.
We’re more than happy and are inclined to chalk this clearly erroneous notice up as another scam attempt. Likely in an effort of a pirate site to punish competitors, as we’ve seen before.
However, that doesn’t make this less of a problem. In fact, if scammers continue to make claims like this, it will likely lead to overbroad takedowns. And with millions of URLs being submitted per day, Google will have a hard time catching them all.
As part of the music industry’s war on so-called ‘stream-ripping’, earlier this year Sony, Universal, and Warner, with assistance from Music Rights Australia and the Australasian Performing Right Association, demanded that ISPs in Australia block access to several YouTube-ripping platforms.
Following a Federal Court appearance in April, during which the music groups asked for action against four key players – 2conv, Flv2mp3, FLVto, and Convert2mp3 – Justice Perram handed down an order requiring most of the country’s ISPs to block the platforms.
This week, the Judge published the reasoning for his decision. While the blocking aspects are specific to Australian law, it contains some interesting comments about the activities of such platforms that may inform similar cases and actions in other regions.
In setting up his arguments, Justice Perram places an emphasis on the differences between streaming and downloading from YouTube.
While it has been argued that in practice there is only one difference (the former is a transient process while the latter goes a step further by retaining the data), the Judge indicates that is not for the end user to decide. The decision is made by the entity that uploads the data to YouTube and by YouTube itself.
“A person who uploads media to YouTube is required, as part of that process, to determine who can view that media and under what circumstances. It is possible as part of that process to grant permission to permit downloading of files,” the Judge writes.
In most cases uploading takes place after the user selects the ‘Standard YouTube License’, which only allows end users to stream the media, not download. Uploading under a ‘Creative Commons License’ can permit end users to download but the labels do not upload on this basis. In essence, the decision of whether to allow streaming or downloading from YouTube lies with the uploader, the Judge says.
YouTube then delivers that content to end users under the terms of the uploading agreement, which is “achieved by YouTube defaulting to delivery of the media via the HTML5 format which enables streaming but not downloading.”
Turning to the ripping sites themselves, the Judge notes that in testing the platforms a paralegal at a law firm was able to “strip music files” out of the musical works uploaded to YouTube by the record companies. Since she was given permission, that was fine, but the Judge noted that there is “no doubt” that anyone else doing so would have infringed copyright.
After ripping took place on the sites in question, the resulting content was made available to end users. That, the Judge notes, is a “communication to the public” so in respect of the musical works detailed in the case, that represents copyright infringement.
“It follows that the operators of the websites are infringing the relevant music and performance copyrights by copying the soundtracks out of music videos streamed from YouTube,” the Judge writes.
“They are also infringing the same copyrights by making soundtracks then available online and electronically transmitting them to users. The operators also facilitate the infringement of both kinds of copyright by permitting users to make a copy of the soundtrack.”
Given that uploaders can grant the ability to allow streaming or downloading, the Judge says that such ripping platforms will only be of use to anyone where YouTube does not allow download functionality, i.e “where no permission is given to make a copy of media on YouTube.”
A statement published on the ConvertMP3 platform, that claims that downloading from YouTube is “completely legal” when users have obtained permission from the copyright owner to do so, is described as “technically correct” by the Judge. However, he dismissed the disclaimer as “entirely without substance”, existing only to “underscore the dishonesty of the website operators.”
The traffic to the websites listed in the order is considerable (66.5 million visits to Convert2mp3.net in January 2019 and 112.4 million to Flvto.biz in January 2019 alone), something which indicates that they are “responsible for piracy of music from music videos on an industrial scale.”
While it’s important to repeat that the order was considered and granted under Australian law, there are common threads with legislation in other regions that may yet prove important in cases against similar platforms.
This week we have three newcomers in our chart.
Netflix, like many other rightsholders, keeps a close eye on pirate sites.