The practice of copyright-trolling is now well-established in many countries around the world.

The companies involved often gather IP addresses from BitTorrent swarms, then via the courts, obtain identities of users from their ISPs.

What follows are threats to the account holder, warning that if he or she doesn’t pay a ‘fine’, then court action will follow. This, of course, is boosted with claims that if the process gets this far, things will get much more expensive.

In reality, however, copyright trolls rarely take cases to court and when they do, they tend to head for the hills when people put up a spirited fight. That was demonstrated again earlier this week when a troll targeted an IT specialist, then backed away after claiming his technical knowledge would allow him to cover up any infringement.

Considering the main evidence in most trolling cases is a simple IP address, captured way before the rightsholders even write to a defendant, it raises the question of whether even the trolls have faith that an IP address alone is enough to prosecute a case. Some courts certainly don’t.

Yet that evidence alone appears to form the basis of claims detailed in a letter received by a pensioner in Sweden during March 2019.

The 75-year-old man was told that his IP address (allocated by his ISP TeliaSonera) had been used to share the hardcore porn movie “The Creepers Family Part 7”, which was produced by Girlfriends Films and licensed to MIRCOM International, a company with a long history of involvement in similar cases.

The company doing the tracking was Media Protector International GmbH, which has been providing data for similar cases for more than a decade.

While there can be no doubt that many IP addresses caught in the dragnets of these companies were indeed used to download and share copyrighted content, innocents are regularly caught in the crossfire. The pensioner from Sweden says that’s the case with him.

He shared his story with Bahnhof, a Swedish ISP which acts as a competitor to TeliaSonera and one that offers a sympathetic ear to people targeted by copyright trolls.

“The infringement occurred on Friday February 2, 2018 at 6:43:17, that is, a time that I as a pensioner sleeps,” he told the ISP.

“I am 75 years old and I do not know much about technology, and I wonder if there is anything I can do or if I should just pay?”

This, of course, is exactly the strategy of copyright trolls. Whether their targets are guilty or innocent, they hope their strongly-worded letters will break the resolve of recipients and make them cave in, parting with cash to make the nightmare go away.

“I sleep poorly and feel great concern because of this, I just want it to stop. My wife wants to pay to get rid of the problem, but if we do will it just make things worse?” he added.

“I am afraid that the bills will continue to come from other agencies and companies, it seems to be a business idea that is better than selling movies. This can be my ruin.”

While the mainstream media has largely given up about worrying about those targeted by copyright trolls, history has shown us that cases against pensioners are rarely well received by the public or those in power.

Two years ago, for example, an 83-year-old grandmother from the UK went to the press after being accused of pirating the Robert Redford film The Company You Keep. That attracted the attention of her local member of parliament, who branded the practice “disgusting” and raised the matter with the government.

It is not known whether the woman ever paid up but given the negative publicity and outcry, it seems unlikely. The case certainly never went to court, which is common when those accused by copyright trolls fight back and/or tell their stories in the media and complain to politicians.

For Bahnhof CEO Jon Karlung, not enough is being done to protect those wrongly targeted, with citizens currently left to fight for themselves.

“It’s a corrupt system promoting copyright trolls and legal firms that thrive on blackmail. Unfortunately, there is not enough political momentum to change the situation. It’s an ongoing scandal, and I believe that this affects the justice system as a whole,” Karlung told TorrentFreak.

“The only solution is to make this problem as visible as possible. People should also start asking their telecom operators why they save data for time spans of 24 months – Bahnhof only saves for 24 hours.”

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

In an effort to turn piracy into profit, copyright holders have chased alleged BitTorrent pirates through courts all over the world.

This so-called copyright troll scheme was also used by the firm Prenda Law. However, the lawyers involved started to break the law themselves.

The firm was accused of all sorts of wrongdoing including identity theft, misrepresentation, and even deception. Most controversial was the shocking revelation that Prenda uploaded their own torrents to The Pirate Bay, creating a honeypot for the people they later sued over pirated downloads.

This eventually caught the attention of the US Justice Department. In 2015 we first reported that two Pirate Bay co-founders had been questioned by Swedish police, acting on behalf of the FBI. The feds were interested in the honeypot evidence, to build a case against Prenda.

A year later the investigation was finished, resulting in a criminal indictment against Prenda attorneys Paul Hansmeier and John Steele. The US Government accused the two of various crimes, including money laundering, perjury, mail, and wire fraud.

Since then both defendants have both signed plea agreements. They now face years in prison. While it is by no means illegal to go after file-sharers, the Prenda attorneys crossed a line by repeatedly lying to or misleading the courts.

The US prosecutor recently recommended a 12.5-year prison sentence for Paul Hansmeier, who instructed his brother to upload torrents of videos he produced himself. In doing so he misled the court, as he made it appear as if the videos were from a third-party company.

In total, Prenda Law generated roughly $3,000,000 from the fraudulent copyright lawsuits they filed at courts throughout the United States.

Thus far very little has been said about the victims of the scheme but with the final sentencing coming up, this has changed. The U.S. Attorney’s Office of the District of Minnesota is now allowing people who were targeted by the scheme to register for restitution.

“HANSMEIER and STEELE were charged and convicted of orchestrating a multi-million dollar fraud scheme in which they obtained payments from victims to settle sham pornography film copyright infringement lawsuits,” the Attorney’s Office writes.

“At the sentencing hearing, the Court may, but is not required to, order HANSMEIER and STEELE to pay restitution to the victims of their scheme.”

The list of potential victims includes everyone who paid a settlement to any of the related companies, including Steele Hansmeier Law, Prenda Law, Alpha Law, Anti-Piracy Group, AF Holdings, Ingenuity 13, Guava LLC, Livewire, and LW Systems.

The Attorney’s Office encourages all potential victims to fill out a form, so it can identify whether they were indeed defrauded by the defendants. The information provided will be shared with the court, but it won’t be available publicly.

The sentencing for both defendants is scheduled for June 4, before Judge Joan N. Ericksen in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Here, it will be decided whether the two defendants must pay restitution, which is not a given.

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

Piracy-configured set-top boxes are the latest in a long line of problems facing copyright holders and broadcasters.

When pre-loaded with custom software they become easily accessible yet formidable piracy tools, providing access to the latest movies, TV shows, live TV programming and live sports broadcasts.

While successful prosecutions have been possible in some regions under existing copyright law, there are plenty of countries that still require a test case. One of those was Singapore, a country that has reportedly become swamped with pirate devices.

In January 2018, it was reported that telecoms, broadcasting, and sporting giants SingTel, Starhub, Fox Networks Group and the Premier League, had teamed up to launch a pioneering private prosecution against those involved in the supply chain.

The complainant in the suit is Neil Gane, who works as General Manager at the Coalition Against Piracy. However, CAP is not involved in this case.

The legal action targeted set-top box distributor Synnex Trading and its client and wholesale goods retailer, An-Nahl. The rightsholders also named Synnex Trading director Jia Xiaofen and An-Nahl director Abdul Nagib as defendants in their private prosecution.

This week, more than a year after the case was filed, Abdul Nagib pleaded guilty to willfully infringing the rightsholders’ copyrights for commercial gain, with a second charge taken into consideration. He originally intended to fight the case.

According to CNA, the 58-year-old admitted to selling a single Android TV box and helping the buyer of that device to access unauthorized copies of copyrighted content, which included soccer matches provided by the Premier League.

In mitigation, Abdul Nagib’s lawyer Mr Srijit said that his client believed that the content offered through the devices, which came with an annual subscription, was licensed by pay TV and IPTV provider Astro Malaysia. He had immediately stopped offering the devices after he received a cease-and-desist notice in 2017.

While Abdul Nagib’s fine of just S$1,200 (US$883) is relatively small given the scale of punishments handed down in other jurisdictions, Mr Srijit said his client had already paid a heavy price after selling his home to finance his defense.

Despite the small fine, the case is also important since this is the first and only successful prosecution of a ‘pirate’ TV box seller in Singapore. However, it is not yet over as the case against Synnex Trading and director Jia Xiaofen is yet to be settled.

Jia allegedly offered to pay Abdul Nagib a small commission for every device sold and an additional fee when customers also purchased a copy of the popular Kodi media player. Abdul Nagib is now reportedly assisting in the prosecution of Jia.

Commenting on the plea and judgment, Louis Boswell, CEO Asia Video Industry Association (AVIA), said that progress against piracy needs to be a team effort.

“In order to combat the serious and growing problem of content theft, a holistic solution is required,” Boswell told TorrentFreak.

“If all stakeholders, government, content producers, distributors, industry associations and intermediaries work together, we believe serious progress in reducing video piracy can be achieved.”

While today’s guilty plea will prove useful to AVIA’s members and other rightsholders, the action is just one of the avenues available to combat piracy.

Last September, Singnet, Fox Networks Group, NGC Network Asia, Fox International Channels (US) Inc, and the Premier League obtained an injunction from the Singapore High Court which required several local ISPs to block access to popular ‘pirate’ apps.

In May 2018, ISPs blocked dozens of torrent and streaming platforms (including The Pirate Bay plus KickassTorrents and Solarmovie variants) following a successful application from the MPAA.

The Hollywood group later obtained a so-called ‘dynamic‘ blocking order which granted it the ability to block sites more efficiently should they attempt to circumvent the earlier order.

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

In its yearly “Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets”, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) lists a few dozen websites said to be involved in piracy or counterfeiting.

The overview is largely based on input from industry groups including the RIAA and MPAA, who submitted their recommendations late last year.

The USTR stresses that the list isn’t exhaustive, nor is it meant to reflect legal violations. The goal of the review is to motivate owners and foreign Governments to take appropriate action and reduce piracy.

“In the absence of good faith efforts, responsible government authorities should investigate reports of piracy and counterfeiting in these and similar markets and pursue appropriate action against such markets and their owners and operators,” the USTR writes.

This year there appears to be a stronger focus on counterfeiting and offline markets than in previous years. There is also a focus on free trade zones, for example, mostly in relation to counterfeiting. However, pirate sites are also highlighted in the report.

First off, the Government reports that there have been some recent successes on the anti-piracy front.  The 123movies websites have been shut down following a criminal investigation in Vietnam and, more recently, the  FAB IPTV service was taken offline following a Europol-led raid.

Still, many piracy-related challenges remain. According to the USTR’s report, The Pirate Bay remains one of the primary offenders, despite some significant downtime issues.

“While The Pirate Bay websites have experienced periodic downtime over the past year, right holders continue to report high levels of infringing activities taking place on this platform,” the USTR writes.

“As one of the first BitTorrent indexing websites and one of its most vocal in openly promoting piracy, The Pirate Bay continues to be one of the most frequently visited websites in the world,” the report adds.

Other prominent torrent sites mentioned in the review are RuTorrent and RARBG. Interestingly, 1337x.to, which was included previously, no longer gets a mention.

The USTR has also included the stream ripping sites Flvto.biz and 2Conv.com, which are currently involved in a US court battle with several record labels. Another popular stream ripping site highlighted by the USTR is MP3juices.cc, and the music-related sites Mp3va.com and Newalbumreleases.net also get a mention.

The latest overview of notorious markets further lists a selection of game-related websites. Firestorm-Servers.com and Warmane.com, for example, which host unauthorized World of Warcraft servers with thousands of players.

Another game-related site is Mpgh.net, which offers a wide variety of hacks and cheats.

“Mpgh.net is an example of a site that provides “cheats” and reportedly offers several hundred thousand free cheats to over 4 million users. The site generates revenue through advertisements and by offering premium accounts, and Internet browsers reportedly detect and warn of malicious content on the site,” the USTR writes.

The malware angle is brought up more often by the USTR, which references various reports which found that pirate sites are often linked to the spreading of malicious content.

The USTR report continues with mentions of popular cyberlockers such as Openload, Uploaded, and Rapidgator. Streaming sites and apps such as Fmovies, TVPlus, and TVBrowser also make the list.

The pirate broadcaster BEOUTQ gets a mention as well, as do the academic pirate sources Sci-Hub and LibGen, as well as Russia’s social network VK.com. The latter keeps being mentioned, despite a long list of anti-piracy actions it has taken in recent years.

In addition to individual sites and services, the USTR notes that some hosting providers have also become problematic players. This includes so-called bulletproof hosters such as FlokiNET.

“FlokiNET is an example of the growing problem of hosting providers that do not respond to notices of infringement or warning letters that the provider is hosting and supporting known infringing websites,” USTR writes.

The USTR hopes that by highlighting these problematic sites and companies, their operators or local law enforcement will take action to prevent copyright infringing activity going forward.

—

A copy of USTR’s 2018 overview of notorious markets (published yesterday) is available here (pdf). The full list of highlighted online sites/service, including those focused on counterfeiting, is as follows:

-1Fichier.com
-BEOUTQ
-Bukalapak.com
-Carousell.com
-Chomikuj.pl
-DHgate.com
-Firestorm-Servers.com and Warmane.com
-FlokiNET
-Flvto.biz and 2Conv.com
-FMovies.is
-Hosting Concepts B.V.
-Indoxx1.com
-Kinogo.cc
-MP3juices.cc
-Mp3va.com
-Mpgh.net
-Newalbumreleases.net
-Openload.co
-Pelispedia.tv
-Pinduoduo.com
-Private Layer Hosted Sites (e.g. Torrentz2.eu)
-Rapidgator.net, Rutracker.org, and Seasonvar.eu
-RARBG.to
-Sci-Hub and LibGen
-Shopee.ph
-Taobao.com
-Thepiratebay.org
-Tokopedia.com
-Turbobit.net
-TVPlus, TVBrowser, and Kuaikan
-Uploaded.net
-Uptobox.com
-VK.com

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

File-hosting site Zippyshare has been online for more than 12 years, serving millions of users every day.

Stats from SimilarWeb indicate that traffic to the site has remained stable for some time, hovering around the 100 million visits per month mark. That positions the site well within the top 500 sites on the whole Internet, making it a major player in the file-hosting market.

The site is utilized by users all over the world but last month those in the UK suddenly found the platform inaccessible. At least initially, there was speculation that local Internet service providers had blocked the site but given the circumstances, that seemed unlikely.

The error messages received by users when attempting to access the site’s domain indicated that ISPs weren’t to blame and Zippyshare itself had probably begun blocking UK visitors. Even those using some UK-based VPN servers couldn’t access the platform either.

It’s been more than month since that unexplained problem first raised its head and the situation doesn’t appear to have changed for those in the UK since. Indeed, a new problem seems to have raised its head elsewhere in Europe.

This week, users of Zippyshare attempting to access the site from Germany began reporting that they too are experiencing the same issues, with visitors seeing the same “403 Forbidden” notice, as shown below;

Tips received by TorrentFreak from users in Germany indicate that the site cannot be reached from several ISPs including Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, M-net, Pyur, Unitymedia, and others.

Changing DNS settings to point to other providers (such as Cloudflare or Google) doesn’t seem to help matters but we did manage to access the site using VPN servers located in Berlin and Frankfurt.

Zippyshare did not respond to our earlier request for comment and the site hasn’t made any announcements that would explain the ‘forbidden’ errors now being displayed across the EU’s most powerful countries.

While that’s a strange situation for a platform of Zippyshare’s scale and reach, stats provided by SimilarWeb reveal that the highest volume of visitors to the site are from Indonesia (13%) followed by Japan (9%), the United States (8%), Brazil (7%) and then India (4%).

This data suggests that countries in the EU are fairly insignificant in terms of traffic, which could explain the apparent apathy. Or, of course, Zippyshare might simply not want to talk about the problem in public, either voluntarily or otherwise, for a number of reasons.

Until the platform comments, speculation will continue.

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