Since Sky is the leading subscription TV provider in the UK, avoiding its charges is high on the agenda for many people.

The initial question is whether to learn how to program set-top devices online, or whether to pay one of hundreds or even thousands of sellers dotted around the country.

These people, often motivated by the lure of a few hundred pounds profit per year, will supply pre-programmed devices. Others, that are sometimes a bit more savvy, will often throw in a pirate IPTV subscription for a higher quality and hopefully more reliable service.

While most of these sellers act with impunity, that wasn’t the case for Ryan Jackson of Rhayader, Wales.

Following an investigation by local Trading Standards and Sky TV, the father-of-two admitted four offenses under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, three relating to selling devices configured to circumvent technological measures and one for breach of copyright for financial gain.

According to a BBC Wales report, Jackson was spotted selling devices on his Facebook page when Powys County Council and Sky were looking for infringers on social media and eBay.

Like many in this line of business, Jackson was offering piracy-configured Amazon devices, granting free access to Sky content. However, he was also selling subscription access to unlicensed IPTV services.

Sky reportedly made a test purchase and received a so-called “fully loaded” stick for £105. According to the prosecution, between January 2016 and August 2018, Jackson received around £18,183 into his PayPal account from similar transactions.

While PayPal is convenient, it also carries detailed records which can be very useful during these types of investigations. Local publication Brecon-Radnor reports that Jackson’s PayPal account revealed the sale of IPTV packages to 84 customers.

According to Sky, this translated to £576 per user if packages had been bought officially, amounting to a total of £48,384 in lost revenue for the broadcaster.

According to Powys County Council, however, Jackson only made between £10 and £30 profit per customer, meaning that his total net earnings were between £840 and £2,500 in total.

At the end of the hearing, Jackson was fined £1,340 and ordered to pay £4,070 in costs plus a £34 surcharge.

“It was not an intelligent thing to do,” the magistrate told Jackson. “You are paying much more than you made.”

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

The Tribler client has been around for well over a decade and during that time it’s developed into the only truly decentralized BitTorrent client out there.

Even if all torrent sites were shut down today, Tribler users would still be able to find and add new content.

The well-funded project is managed by dozens of academic researchers, which is a guarantee for continued development. One of the challenges in recent years has been to make torrenting via Tribler anonymous.

The Tribler team addressed this problem by adding a built-in Tor network to the client, routing all data through a series of peers. In essence, Tribler users then become their own Tor network helping each other to hide their IP-addresses through encrypted proxies.

This works reasonably well but has some downsides.  A Tor-like network tends to be slower as files are shared through multiple connections. In addition, it relies on “exit nodes” whose IP-addresses remain visible to the outside world.

The latest Triber release, published today, aims to address these challenges in ways we’ve never seen before.

Professor Johan Pouwelse, leader and founder of the Tribler project, informs us that his lab at Delft University of Technology has bought 14.4 petabytes of Internet bandwidth. This bandwidth, provided by Leaseweb, will be used to scale-up the Tor-like privacy protection.

To pay for the bandwidth they sold a three-digit number of its Bitcoin stash. The University took an interest in Bitcoin in its early days and started mining years ago, and this money is now used for Tribler’s development.

While it’s certainly interesting to see that Bitcoin mining funded the bandwidth purchase, what Tribler is doing with it is even more important.

Tribler was the first torrent client to treat bandwidth as a currency. It added a blockchain which keeps track of people’s sharing habits and with the latest release users can now “mine” credits. The ultimate goal is to have a stable economy with users trading in bandwidth to ensure fast and anonymous downloads.

To kickstart this economy, Tribler will deploy “token robots” that can manage the bandwidth and operate exit points. This means that it’s easier for individual users to become anonymous.

“We create swarms of intelligent bots to manage bandwidth. These bots do as they are programmed, they can make smart decisions. We believe robots can’t be as easily corrupted as humans or forced to act against their own will,” Pouwelse says.

“They can autonomously buy servers using Bitcoin, self-replicate, operate a Tor-like exit node, and sell Tribler bandwidth coins to survive another month,” he adds.

More than 26 researchers worked on “terminator bots,” as they are called,  and Pouwelse says that they are among the most autonomous and smart software bots out there.

By default, users are not operating as an exit-node in the pseudo-anonymity network. This can be changed in the settings, but people who choose to be an exit-node should be aware of the consequences.

Over the past several years, millions of euros have been spent on Tribler and related research. Professor Pouwelse and his team will continue this work during the coming years. They see themselves as a unique project without commercial interests.

There are others working on similar decentralization goals, combining BitTorrent with the blockchain. However, professor Pouwelse is not a fan of these initiatives.

“We are seeing Bittorrent bundling malware and promoting a spammy ICO offering. It is sad to see rot inside our great community. We are the only non-profit team advancing decentralization from the tested foundation of BitTorrent,” Pouwelse says.

Today the researchers released Triber V7.2 and those who are interested can take it for a spin.

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

As far as anti-piracy strategies go, website blocking is considered by entertainment industry players to be one of the most effective.

Following action by the movie, TV shows, music, sports and publishing industries, thousands of websites are blocked by ISPs in many countries, usually following copyright lawsuits against the providers themselves.

In Spain, following action by local music industry players including anti-piracy group AGEDI, even more sites can now be added to the growing list. Following a decision handed down by Barcelona Commercial Court No. 1, a total of seven torrent-based platforms will have to be blocked by local ISPs.

Perhaps the most recognizable of the group is 1337x.to, the world’s second most-visited torrent site according to TF’s recently published Top 10 Torrent Sites data. The site is blocked in many countries due to its popularity but against the odds, continues to grow.

Next up is LimeTorrents.cc, which ranked as the 7th most popular torrent site in our report. In common with 1337x, the site is subject to ISP blocking in several regions.

Two additional popular torrent indexers – Torlock.com and Torrentfunk.com – are also included in the group, along with ExtraTorrent.cd, a site that shares the name of the now-defunct giant ExtraTorrent but has no connection to the original.

Completing the list are Masquetorrent.com (which appears to be down), and Isohunt.to, which used to be a torrent indexing site but now redirects to TPB.wiki, a fairly comprehensive proxy and mirror site portal designed for unblocking blocked sites.

The decision by the Barcelona court means that major ISPs including Movistar, Vodafone, Orange, and others will soon have to begin blocking the sites. However, if ISPs use the same techniques as they did following previous court orders, a simple change of DNS will be enough for users to circumvent the blockade.

Local music industry group Promusicae (Productores de Música de España) welcomed the decision of the Barcelona Court, with president Antonio Guisasola noting that it contributes to “the end of the era of impunity” for pirates.

“We have suffered for many years at the hands of those who believed that music was a product that could be plundered and distributed without the slightest scruple,” Guisasola says.

“In the end, the efforts of creators and producers do not fall on deaf ears. Beyond the harsh generalized economic crisis, the music industry has suffered a bloody time that destroyed tens of thousands of jobs and put at serious risk the very development of our cultural fabric.

“The decisive changes implemented to favor new and more accessible modes of consumption require the backing of administrative and judicial authorities to rid themselves of the unfair competition of fraudulent businesses and resolutions such as this show that we are all moving in the right direction,” Guisasola concludes.

The music industry is not alone in its site-blocking efforts in Spain. Last year, Hollywood flexed its muscles to tackle sites offering movie and TV content illegally.

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 years we have covered dozens of piracy-related lawsuits, mostly from United States courts.

In many of these cases, defendants are foreign sites or services which don’t put up much of a fight.

That’s not true for the copyright infringement lawsuit a group of major record labels, backed by the RIAA, brought against Tofig Kurbanov last year.

The Russian operator of YouTube rippers FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com fought back with a motion to dismiss. This request was granted last week. Judge Claude Hilton ruled that the court lacked jurisdiction over these types of sites if they are operated from abroad.

“As the Websites are semi-interactive, the interactions with the users are non-commercial, and there were no other acts by the Defendant that would demonstrate purposeful targeting, the Court finds that Defendant did not purposefully avail himself of the benefits and protections of either Virginia or the United States,” the Judge wrote.

The legal win is a modern-day David vs. Goliath story. The record labels, good for billions of dollars in annual revenue, were defeated by the Russian operator of the two stream-ripping sites. 

However, this battle isn’t over just yet. In his memorandum opinion, Judge Milton stressed that the labels are not allowed to refile their case in another district court. They can appeal the dismissal though, which is exactly what they’ve just done.

In a filing submitted yesterday, the record labels announce that they are appealing the ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Via this route, they hope to overturn the dismissal.

“The court got it wrong,” RIAA spokesperson Cara Duckworth commented to Billboard.

“Its decision represents a big step backward in the protection of American culture and the creators that fuel it. We look forward to laying out our arguments in the weeks ahead,” she added.

During the appeal, the court will consider the arguments from both sides once more. 

The owner of the sites, Tofig Kurbanov, has hired a team of legal experts from and will continue to fight back. Kurbanov himself has never been to the United States and his sites don’t purposefully target either Virginia or the US.

Val Gurvits, one of the attorneys who represented the site operator, informs TorrentFreak that the defense already expected the RIAA labels to appeal. 

“We’re not at all surprised by the RIAA decision to appeal – this opinion really struck a blow at their strategy of suing people in places where they’ve never even visited, assuming that they’ll get a quick default judgment before the court ever realizes that there wasn’t any jurisdiction to begin with.”  

The attorney doesn’t believe that the record labels are going to succeed. The District Court made a thoughtful and well-reasoned decision and it’s going to be hard for them to overturn on appeal, he says.

If the fact that .com and .biz domains are administered by companies located in Virginia is enough to establish jurisdiction, as the labels argued,  then millions of foreign companies could be easily sued in Virginia, without any further presence there.

“At the end of the day, our client is an individual who lives in Russia, who has never been to the United States, and who had no substantive connection to the United States,” Gurwitz says. 

“If he could be subject to personal jurisdiction here, then there’s no reason that an American citizen couldn’t be subject to jurisdiction in China or Russia for typing out lines of code in his living room in Boston.  That would be a dangerous path to travel – the District Court wisely declined to go down that path and we think the 4thCircuit will similarly decline,” he adds. 

The record labels, assisted by the RIAA, hoped to resolve the matter quickly but it didn’t turn out that way. For now, it’s clear that the stream-rippers and their operator have won the first battle. 

During the month to come it will become clear whether the dismissal will stand or not. If the record labels lose the appeal as well, they could also choose to file a lawsuit in Russia. 

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

Every week, millions of YouTubers upload content for pleasure and indeed profit, hoping to reach a wide audience with their topics of choice.

On occasion, these users run into trouble by using content to which they don’t own the copyrights, such as a music track or similar.

While these complaints can often be dealt with quickly and relatively amicably using YouTube’s Content ID system, allegedly-infringing users can also get a so-called ‘strike’ against their account. Get three of these and a carefully maintained channel, with countless hours of work behind it, can be rendered dead by YouTube.

As reported on many occasions, this system is open to all kinds of abuse but a situation highlighted by a YouTuber called ‘ObbyRaidz’ takes things to a horrible new level.

The YouTuber, who concentrates on Minecraft-related videos, reports that he’s received two bogus strikes on his account. While this is nothing new, it appears the strikes were deliberately malicious with longer-term plan to extort money from him.

“I have been striked twice and basically extorted,” ObbyRaidz revealed this morning. “If I don’t pay this dude he’s going to strike a third one of my videos down.”

The alleged scammer contacted ObbyRaidz, who lives in Texas, via Twitter. He or she warned the YouTuber that unless he paid a sum via PayPal or bitcoin, another complaint and therefore a third strike would be added to his account.

“Hi Obby, We striked you,” the message from ‘VengefulFlame‘ begins.

“Our request is $150 PayPal or $75 btc (Bitcoin). You may send the money via goods/services if you do not think we will cancel or hold up our end of the deal.

“Once we receive our payment, we will cancel both strikes on your channel. Again – you are free to charge back if we don’t but we assure you we will.”

The YouTuber was then granted “a very short amount of time” to make his decision whether to pay the amount or potentially lose his channel.

While people should be protected from this kind of abuse, both from a copyright perspective and the crime of extortion, ObbyRaidz says he’s had zero luck in getting assistance from YouTube.

“It’s very unfortunate and YouTube has not done very much for me. I can’t get in contact with them. One of the appeals got denied,” he explains.

Like many YouTubers, ObbyRaidz says he’s worked “really hard” on his channel but with no help from YouTube, he’s scared he’s going to lose his entire channel due to these bogus complaints.

“It’s not fun and i’m gonna be really sad to see if my channel gets terminated. Then I have to go through the process of getting in contact with YouTube and stuff. YouTube is very broken and I want to see if they can fix their system so this doesn’t happen to other content creators,” he says.

While ObbyRaidz has a pretty small reach at the moment with 5.2K subscribers, this attempt to extort him will likely backfire – in his favor.

Once the story begins to circulate, it’s more than likely YouTube will review his account and put it back in good standing. And, if it hasn’t been done already, a criminal process should be initiated to deal with what is clearly an attempt at extortion.

While false strikes are a clear abuse of process, extortion is an extremely serious crime and should be treated as such. Meanwhile, ObbyRaidz should enjoy a nice boost in subscribers from the exposure, so the future won’t be totally miserable.

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