After years of work, on March 26, 2019 the new EU Copyright Directive was adopted, with 348 Members of Parliament in favor, 274 against, and 36 abstentions.

A little under a month later, the EU Council of Ministers waved the legislation through, despite opposition from Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Finland, and Sweden. Belgium, Estonia, and Slovenia abstained.

EU member states were then granted two years to implement the law, which includes the controversial Article 17 (formerly 13). That requires platforms like YouTube to sign licensing agreements with creators. If that proves impossible, they will have to ensure that infringing content uploaded by users is taken down and not re-uploaded to their services.

Or, if one takes on face value a recently published official translation of the Directive, something much more outrageous.

As revealed by Eleonara Rosati over at IPKitten, someone has made a small but monumental mistake when transposing the Directive into Italian.

First, the relevant section in English;

7. The cooperation between online content-sharing service providers and rightholders shall not result in the prevention of the availability of works or other subject matter uploaded by users, which do not infringe copyright and related rights, including where such works or other subject matter are covered by an exception or limitation.

Now, the same section in the Italian version (translated back to English);

7. Cooperation between online content sharing service providers and rights holders must prevent the availability of works or other materials uploaded by users that do not infringe copyright or related rights, even in cases where such works or other materials are subject to an exception or limitation.

So, according to this translation, sites like YouTube must work with rightsholders to ensure that non-infringing works are never made available on their platforms, even when the use of such works is allowed under relevant exceptions, presumably including…..erm….fair use. Or is that unfair use? Difficult to say.

Rosati suggests on Twitter that people might like to run through the now fully-published Directive on the Official Journal of the EU to see if there are any other errors in other countries’ translations.

Considering Italy didn’t want this law to pass, it’s lucky this error got spotted early or the much-heralded “meme ban” might’ve been just the tip of the iceberg.

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 three newcomers in our chart.

Shazam! 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	(3)	Shazam! (Subbed HDRip)	7.5 / trailer
2	(1)	Avengers: Endgame (HDCam)	9.1 / trailer
3	(…)	Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles	7.3 / trailer
4	(2)	Cold Pursuit	6.4 / trailer
5	(…)	The Professor	7.0 / trailer
6	(…)	John Wick 3 (HDCam)	8.2 / trailer
7	(5)	Aquaman	7.7 / trailer
8	(4)	Glass	6.9 / trailer
9	(8)	Captain Marvel (HDTS)	7.2 / trailer
10	(6)	Pet Sematary	6.1 / trailer

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

Founded in 2012, MagnetDL offered a clean and easy-to-use torrent search portal, which gained a substantial userbase over the years.

The site relied on magnet links instead of regular torrent files, as the name suggests, and was most popular in the UK where it was one of the few popular torrent sites not blocked by ISPs. 

MagnetDL flew mostly under the radar but hundreds of thousands of people have it marked as their favorite search engine. Many of these were taken by surprise yesterday when the site suddenly announced that it had closed shop.

“MagnetDL has closed. It has been a great seven years and it’s sad to have it come to an end. Thanks to everyone who has visited over the years especially our regular visitors,” a message on the site reads.

TorrentFreak reached out to the operator to get more details on the reason for this decision, but at the time of writing, we have yet to hear back. This means that we can only guess about the exact reason for the shutdown.

We are not aware of any legal issues being faced by the site. It could be that the operator simply lost the motivation to keep the site going. Perhaps in combination with a loss in revenue, which other torrent sites have previously cited as a reason to throw in the towel.

The torrent site hadn’t changed much since it was first launched seven years ago. The informative ‘help’ section, which was one of the most elaborate we’d ever seen at a public torrent site, expanded a bit, but the homepage still looked exactly the same a few days ago. 

The magnet search engine never made it into the top 10 of most popular torrent sites, but it came very close. In some regions, such as the UK, it definitely had a solid spot among the most-visited ‘pirate’ portals.

MagnetDL didn’t allow users to upload files and grabbed links from other torrent sites, which means that no content has been lost. However, based on comments posts on various social media sites, the site itself will be dearly missed. 

 

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

During February, China’s National Copyright Administration (NCAC) announced that it would be upping efforts to deal with copyright infringement.

On top of a promise to “dig deep” into the sources of piracy and “sternly investigate” online platforms that help to distribute pirated content, the NCAC said it would also target unauthorized “camming”.

Camming, the act of recording movies in theaters with video cameras, has been a major headache for the entertainment industries for decades. Illegal copies often hit the Internet within hours of a movie’s premiere, as was the case last month with Avengers: Endgame.

While the NCAC clearly couldn’t do anything about that serious event, the question remains whether physical deterrents (such as bag searches and action against complicit theater owners) can also be augmented by technical measures.

Before Endgame dramatically hit the web, the China-based partnership of Ogilvy and Focus Film Media, part of Focus Media Group, announced that they had developed a new system to prevent camming taking in place in cinemas.

“Originality is the soul of the film industry and the foundation from which it thrives upon; it is our job to protect this originality,” said Jason Jiang, Founder and Chairman of Focus Media Group.

“We are delighted to have gone beyond a conventional approach and develop the ‘Piracy Blockr,’ which allows us to address the problem in a discrete but effective way, ensuring that the film industry is protected for years to come.”

The image above, although clearly mocked up, provides an idea of how the system is supposed to work. A watermark, invisible to the viewer, is captured by camcorders when an attempt is made to record the screen.

So how does it work? TorrentFreak spoke with Ogilvy to find out.

“There is a lot more to light than what mere human eyes can detect, but a device in your pocket can help you see beyond your biological limits. Our eyes can only detect colors of light that we see as a rainbow, primarily shades of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet,” says Silvia Zhang, Ogilvy Marketing & Communications Manager.

“So while our naked eyes can’t pick up on the wavelength of infrared light, the sensors in your phones and cameras can – essentially making the invisible visible.”

Anyone with a smartphone can easily see what the system is about. Simply press a button on an infrared remote control and point it at the camera lens and the image on the screen will display the infrared light emitted by the device. The camera can ‘see’ the infrared light, we can’t.

“We used this to our advantage to combat the multi-billion dollar illegal cam recording industry by embedding panels of infrared light powered watermarks, which we call the ‘Piracy Blockr’, behind cinema screens in China,” Zhang adds.

The idea of using infrared light to foil pirates isn’t new. A report dating back almost 10 years reveals that Japan’s National Institute of Informatics had teamed up with Sharp to pulse infrared light through cinema screens to disturb digital recording devices.

Since we haven’t heard of any such devices actually being deployed in cinemas, we asked Ogilvy how many screens its system currently ‘protects’ in China. The company didn’t respond to our question, despite repeated attempts.

We also asked how the Piracy Blockr system is able to defeat determined cammers who attach infrared filters to their devices. The company didn’t respond to that question either. A request for a real-life image or video clip of Piracy Blockr in action received the same response.

Some research appears to have been carried out in India (pdf) which considered the challenges presented by pirates who deploy infrared filtering but the problem clearly isn’t straightforward. If it was, someone would be making millions by now while resigning ‘camming’ to history.

As for Piracy Blockr, we won’t be holding our breath while waiting for a live demo.

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, the World Wide Web looked nothing like it does today.

Mark Zuckerberg was still preoccupied with “Facemash,” the “hot or not” site he launched before Facebook was invented. YouTube wasn’t around yet either, nor were Twitter and Instagram, which launched years later.

At the time nearly everyone used regular computers to access the web. Smartphones and tablets didn’t exist, and high-quality online video streaming was unthinkable on most residential Internet connections. If there was anything to stream at all.

People interested in watching a movie could use the Internet to buy a DVD at one of the early webshops or sign up with Netflix, which shipped DVDs through the mail. There were no download stores yet.

Given this context, imagine the appeal of a website that offered a high-quality archive of digital movies and tv-series to download, for free.

That site was The Pirate Bay.

Remarkably, many of the videos that were posted on the site during the early days remain available today. In fact, quite a few torrents on The Pirate Bay have been around longer than some of the site’s users.

This is quite an achievement, as torrents require at least one person with a full copy of the file to keep it alive. This prompted us to take a look at the oldest Pirate Bay torrents that are still being shared today.

During the early months of the site, it appears that some torrents were purged or otherwise lost. The oldest ones we can find data back to March 2004, which means that they are well over 15 years old today. 

An episode of “The High Chaparral” has the honor of being the oldest torrent. The file was originally uploaded on March 25, 2004, and although it lists zero seeders in search results, there are still several people actively sharing the torrent.

Many of the other torrents in the list above need some help. However, the Top Secret Recipes E-Books and a copy of the documentary Revolution OS, which covers the history of Linux, GNU, and the free software movement, are doing very well.

While these torrents have survived one-and-a-half decades of turmoil, including two raids, they’re still going strong. In part, perhaps, because some people want to keep history alive.

“To maintain history, I will gladly put this on my seedbox forever,” one commenter writes below the High Chaparral torrent, with another one adding “I will save this torrent for history!!!”

History indeed, as it is clear that things have changed over the past 15 years. In the early days, The Pirate Bay wasn’t just popular because people didn’t have to pay. It was often the only option to get a digital copy of a movie, TV-show, or even a music album. It was a revolution in a way.

This is still the case to a certain degree in some countries, but to many, the magical appeal has gone now that there are so many legal alternatives online.

It’s worth keeping in mind, though, that these legal alternatives were in part a direct answer to sites such as The Pirate Bay.

In fact, if piracy hadn’t existed the world might have looked entirely different today. Piracy showed the entertainment industries that people wanted instant online access to media, a demand that was later fulfilled by iTunes, Netflix streaming, Spotify, and many others.

Today The Pirate Bay remains online. Despite several raids, criminal prosecutions, dozens of website blockades, and other anti-piracy measures, the site continues to thrive. And so do its torrents.

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