The European Parliament sent a clear signal this week when it adopted the Copyright Directive.

While some MEPs state that they mistakenly pushed the wrong button on the close vote to allow changes to the text, the ultimate vote was clear.

With 348 votes in favor, 274 against, and 36 abstentions, Parliament adopted the Copyright Directive, unchanged. There is still a small chance that negotiations could be reopened if the Council doesn’t approve, but that’s really the last straw.

The French Government, however, is done waiting and is moving full steam ahead.

In a speech at the Series Mania Festival in Lille, French Minister of Culture Franck Riester described the outcome of the vote as a breakthrough. Despite fierce protects, Europe stood tall and seized a historic opportunity to bring copyright into the digital age, he said.

“Despite intense and unprecedented pressure from the tech giants, despite massive campaigns of misinformation on social networks, Europe has held up well. Europe has not yielded. Europe has resisted.”

The Minister sees the Copyright Directive as an essential piece of legislation. It won’t change anything for Internet users, he told the audience, but it will change the lives of millions of creators.

Article 13, which was confusingly renamed to Article 17 in the final text, will ensure that Internet platforms, YouTube in particular, will have to pay fair compensation to rightsholders.

“This is the first step towards greater accountability of platforms; towards a better sharing of the value that’s linked to the distribution of works online, for the benefit of creators,” Riester said.

“In the future, YouTube will have to correctly compensate the creators whose works are broadcast on its platform,” the Minister added.

France could have implemented similar legislation without Europe. However, the Minister of Culture stresses that a Europe-wide agreement is important. Large Internet platforms can’t circumvent that by simply blocking a single country.

With backing from the European Parliament, France now plans to move forward, without wasting any time.

“I want us to transpose the Copyright Directive and enter it into force as soon as possible,” Riester noted.

Most of the text will be transposed into the new ‘Audiovisual law,’ an anti-piracy law which the Government expects to present this summer. This includes including Article 13/17.

Under the article, many for-profit Internet platforms are required to license content from copyright holders. If that is not possible, they have to ensure that infringing content is taken down and not re-uploaded to their services.

While ‘upload filters’ are not specifically mentioned, that’s what most opponents fear. In his speech, the Minister doesn’t mention upload filters either. However, he does reference the Government’s “mission to promote and supervise content recognition technologies.”

The French news site NextInpact reports that this mission will be entrusted to Hadopi, the National Film Center, and the Superior Council of Literary and Artistic Property (CSPLA). Interestingly, the mission letter is dated March 1st, long before this week’s vote.

Besides transposing the Copyright Directive into national law, the French will also propose a variety of other anti-piracy measures in the new Audiovisual law. According to Riester, it will help to “relaunch the fight against piracy.”

France has been on the anti-piracy enforcement frontline for years and was the first country to introduce a ‘three strikes’ system for file-sharers. Today, however, most piracy is streaming related, which requires a different approach.

Since classic pirate sites are not going to comply with any laws, France will introduce a national blacklist to target the streaming piracy epidemic.  This blacklist will cover clearly infringing sites, while making sure that these are not accessible through mirrors either.

The final text of the new anti-piracy law is expected to be introduced this summer.

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

The story of pirate streaming sites Kinox.to and Movie4k.to is one of the most unusual on record.

Serving as a replacement for Kino.to, a site that was taken down almost eight years ago in one of Europe’s largest ever anti-piracy operations, Kinox.to quickly grew to become a potent successor. Three years later, however, things took a turn for the worse.

In October 2014, Germany-based investigators acting on behalf of the Attorney General carried out raids in several regions of the country looking for four main suspects.

Two of those were brothers, Kreshnik and Kastriot Selimi. Then aged 21 and 25-years-old, the pair were said to be the main operators of Kinox.to and Movie4k.to. They immediately went on the run.

In 2017, there was a breakthrough. Younger brother Kreshnik, who by this time had reached 24, was detained after handing himself over to authorities in Kosovo. Little has been heard of him since.

Now, however, a Handelsblatt report indicates the now 26-year-old has been released from prison after spending just nine months in custody, partly in prisons in the Balkans.

For a man who was originally being hounded down for alleged crimes include predatory blackmail, armed robbery, extortion, arson, copyright infringement and tax evasion, Kreshnik appears to have won over the authorities by being cooperative on the money front.

After making a confession, Kreshnik reportedly helped the German tax office recover around 1.75 million euros.

“We have therefore set the procedure for victim-offender compensation,” said prosecutor Wolfgang Klein. In this case, the victim is the tax office, Handelsblatt reports.

Kreshnik is now being described as playing the part of an “economically legitimate straw man” of two companies based in Hong Kong, which received funds funneled through Cyprus from advertising companies affiliated with the streaming sites.

As highlighted by Tarnkappe, much of the details concerning how the sites operated, under whose control, and when, is still up for debate. Nevertheless, both Kinox.to and Movie4k.to remain stubbornly online today, despite all the chaos several years ago.

What is clear, however, is that the authorities have never caught up with Kastriot Selimi, Kreshnik’s older brother. He remains on the run after four years with charges of predatory extortion, coercion, arson and tax evasion still hanging over this head.

Whether the police will ever detain the alleged pirate site operator will remain to be seen, but others involved in the site have indeed fallen.

In December 2015, Arvit O (aka “Pedro”) who handled technical issues on KinoX, was sentenced to 40 months in prison for his involvement in the site.

Arvit O was found guilty of copyright infringement by the District Court of Leipzig. The then 29-year-old admitted to infringing 2,889 works. The Court also found that he hacked the computers of two competitors in order to improve Kinox’s market share.

KinoX.to made headlines again in February 2018, for being the first pirate site to be blocked by ISPs in Germany. It’s been playing cat and mouse with the authorities ever since, using alternative domains and mirror sites to evade the blockades.

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

Over the past several years, so-called copyright trolls have been accused of various dubious schemes and actions, but one firm crossed into criminal territory.

The now-defunct Prenda Law repeatedly deceived courts, obtaining millions of dollars in dubious piracy settlements, while using sham companies as clients.

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.

The accusation was first published here on TorrentFreak. While some disregarded it as a wild conspiracy theory, the US Department of Justice took it rather seriously. These and other allegations ultimately resulted in a criminal indictment, which was filed in 2016.

The US Government accused two leading Prenda lawyers of various crimes, including money laundering, perjury, mail, and wire fraud. Since then both defendants, attorneys Paul Hansmeier and John Steele, have both signed plea agreements.

Last summer, Hansmeier admitted that he is guilty of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud, as well as conspiracy to commit money laundering. With the final decision coming up, the Government and the defendant have now issued their sentencing recommendations.

According to the Government, it is clear that Hansmeier was the driving force behind the entire scheme. He came up with the settlement scheme, drafted nearly all paperwork that was used to deceive judges, and directed his brother to upload torrents to lure pirates.

“Hansmeier instructed his brother, Peter Hansmeier, to upload ‘torrent files’ to BitTorrent websites such as the Pirate Bay, affirmatively to induce people to steal his clients’ copyrighted pornographic movies,” the Government writes.

“Paul Hansmeier selected the pornographic movies for his brother to upload based upon how attractive they would be to BitTorrent users, thus deliberately encouraging the piracy Hansmeier pretended to hate.”

Hansmeier’s brother uploaded several torrents under the username Sharkmp4, many of which remain online today. 

With the IP-addresses that were obtained through this honeypot scheme, Prenda requested subpoenas to obtain the names and addresses of Internet subscribers. These people were then threatened into settling for figures up to $3,000. Whether they were guilty or not appeared to be irrelevant.

“Hansmeier was generally content to take this step without investigating whether the subscriber was, in fact, the infringer. Hansmeier thus inflicted plenty of pain on persons who did not, in fact, download his pornographic bait,” the Government writes.

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

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. Hansmeier also filmed and produced many videos himself, leading the court to believe that these were from a third-party company.

Hansmeier argued that the videos were from a company called “Ingenuity 13,” for example, but didn’t mention that he was the driving force behind it. Also, the court was led to believe that pirates caused financial damage, even though the videos were never commercially distributed.

Based on these and other allegations, the U.S. prosecution has reached a rather damning conclusion. 

“In summary, Hansmeier was greedy, arrogant, devious, mendacious, and consistently positioned other people to be damaged by his conduct, even as he enjoyed the proceeds of the scheme he orchestrated,” it writes. 

As such, the Government is recommending that the court sentences Hansmeier to 150 months in prison, which is believed to be within the guidelines for this specific case.

The attorney for Hansmeier disagrees with this recommendation. The defense has several objections to the presentence investigation report. It, therefore, calls for a lower sentence of no more than 87 months followed by three years of supervision.

Hansmeier’s attorney also requests the court not to issue a fine, as restitution will be paid to those that were damaged by the settlement scheme. 

Either way, it is clear that the Prenda attorney will likely spend several years in prison. 

The other defendant, John Steele, has also pleaded guilty but the Government is much more positive about his conduct following the indictment. 

“Steele has not shied away from the ugly truth of his crimes and the significant consequences that he faces. Unlike codefendant Hansmeier and many other similarly situated defendants, Steele has not tried to evade or minimize the extent and impact of his crimes.

“Shortly after being charged, Steele met with the government, provided a truthful and complete rendition of his misconduct, and since that time has stood ready to testify against Hansmeier if called upon to do so,” the prosecution adds.

Unlike Hansmeier, Steele did not fight the case. While he deserves a prison sentence, this cooperative stance should be taken into account. The Government says it will issue a more specific recommendation for Steele in the future.

Both Prenda defendants will be sentenced at a later date.

—

A copy of the US Government’s sentence recommendation for Paul Hansmeier is available here (pdf) and the Government’s position on Steele’s sentencing can be found here (pdf). 

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

For the past several years, Russia has continued with its mission to restrict access to content the state finds objectionable.

Many kinds of sites, from alleged pirate platforms to sites hosting extremist content, have all been affected.

Local ISPs are required by law to block their domains, rendering them inaccessible. However, plenty of circumvention options are available, something the government is trying to address.

During July 2017, President Vladimir Putin signed a bill into law aiming to close this loophole. The plan was to prevent citizens from accessing banned sites using VPNs, proxies, Tor, and other anonymizing services.

The threat was simple: if such services were found to be facilitating access to banned platforms, they too could find themselves on Russia’s ‘Internet blacklist’, known locally as FGIS.

While some VPN providers pulled out of Russia well before the new legislation (Private Internet Access exited in 2016 for unconnected reasons), others have continued. Now, however, authorities are attempting to tighten the noose.

During the past few days, telecoms watch Roscomnadzor says it sent compliance notifications to 10 major VPN services with servers inside Russia – NordVPN, ExpressVPN, TorGuard, IPVanish, VPN Unlimited, VyprVPN, Kaspersky Secure Connection, HideMyAss!, Hola VPN, and OpenVPN.

The government agency is demanding that the affected services begin interfacing with the FGIS database, blocking the sites listed within. Several other local companies – search giant Yandex, Sputnik, Mail.ru, and Rambler – are already connected to the database and filtering as required.

“In accordance with paragraph 5 of Article 15.8 of the Federal Law No. 149-FZ of 27.07.2006 ‘On Information, Information Technology and on Protection of Information’ hereby we are informing you about the necessity to get connected to the Federal state informational system of the blocked information sources and networks [FGIS] within thirty working days from the receipt [of this notice],” the notice reads.

A notice received by TorGuard reveals that the provider was indeed given just under a month to comply. The notice also details the consequences for not doing so, i.e being placed on the blacklist with the rest of the banned sites so it cannot operate in Russia.

TorGuard, however, is clear – it won’t operate under those terms so has already left of its own accord.

“At the time of this writing TorGuard has taken steps to remove all physical server presence in Russia. We have wiped clean all servers in our Saint Petersburg and Moscow locations and will no longer be doing business with data centers in the region,” the company said in a statement.

“We would like to be clear that this removal of servers was a voluntary decision by TorGuard management and no equipment seizure occurred.”

The demand from Roscomnadzor sent to TorGuard and the other companies also requires that they hand over information to the authorities, including details of their operators and places of business.

The notice itself states that for foreign entities, Russian authorities require the full entity name, country of residence, tax number and/or trade register number, postal and email address details, plus other information.

The Roscomnadzor notification provided by TorGuard doesn’t make any demands to access VPN customer data. However, given TorGuard’s privacy policies, that should already be a moot point.

“We do not store any logs so even if servers were compromised it would be impossible for customer’s data to be exposed,” the provider added.

The same situation should also be true at several of the other VPN providers contacted by Russian authorities. NordVPN, ExpressVPN, TorGuard and VyprVPN, for example, all declared in TorrentFreak’s 2019 annual roundup that they carry zero logs.

As the companies in question consult with their legal teams, only time will tell which of the others will choose to comply with Russian law and begin blocking – or leave the region completely.

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

With millions of monthly visitors, Boerse.to is one of the most popular ‘warez boards’ in Germany.

The site launched in 2014, following the demise of Boerse.bz. Like its predecessor, it operates as a linking site where users archive and share links to pirated movies, TV-shows, music, and more.

A few days ago, subscribers of Vodafone Germany noticed that something wasn’t right. All of a sudden, they were unable to access the Boerse.to domain. Instead of the usual homepage, they were redirected to a blocking notification.

This came as a surprise, as there was no knowledge of a blocking request against Vodafone in German courts. Also, subscribers of other Internet providers could still access the site just fine, as the local news site Tarnkappe confirmed.

After the weekend, more details started to emerge. Vodafone confirmed that it had indeed started to block Boerse.to, but not by court order. Instead, it decided to implement the blocking measure following a request from the German music rights group GEMA.

“On the basis of a notification from GEMA, we have set up a DNS blockade for the ‘boerse.to’ domain. “The blockade affects Vodafone GmbH’s fixed and mobile network,” a Vodafone spokesperson informs TorrentFreak. 

The measure doesn’t come out of the blue. Vodafone was previously notified by its service provider 1&1, which took action following a complaint from GEMA. The music rights group then went after Vodafone as well.

While there is no court order directing the ISP to implement a blockade, Vodafone believes it has to take action in order to avoid liability. 

“GEMA has officially sent us a notification and we have set up the DNS blockade in order to avoid a legal dispute in accordance with the principles established by the Federal Court of Justice,” the ISP informed TorrentFreak.

In the referenced Federal Court case, last summer the Court ruled that WiFi providers cannot be held liable for piracy carried out by their users. However, they can be told to block file-sharing services and even entire websites once any copyright infringement has been confirmed.

“According to the Dead Island decision of the Federal Court of Justice in July 2018, there is a subsidiary obligation to act under Section 7 (4) TMG for the access provider,” Vodafone tells us.

“As an access provider, we are critical of these blocking requests. We comply with a legal obligation here,” the ISP notes, adding that it verified in advance that GEMA took its own pre-litigation efforts against the original infringers.

This isn’t the first time that Vodafone has implemented a pirate site blockade based on these arguments. It did the same late last year after it was notified about infringing activity at the streaming portals ‘s.to’ and ‘bs.to’.

Commenting on the blockade, GEMA said that it would prefer to take action against site owners directly. However, this isn’t always possible, often because the operators are unknown. Blocking is the only remaining option.

While many rightsholders will welcome this shortcut route as an easier way to block websites in Germany, the effectiveness of the measures is still up for debate.

Generally speaking, a DNS blockade is easily circumvented by subscribers, who can simply which to open alternatives, provided by companies such as Google and Cloudflare.

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