A year ago “Article 13” was only known to a select audience with a particular interest in copyright issues.

Today, EU’s copyright reform proposals and the potential ‘Internet filters’ have gone mainstream.

Last September the European Parliament backed the controversial Article 13 plans. This set in motion a round of trilogue negotiations during which the final text would be drawn up.

Initially, the last negotiation round was scheduled for last December, but that was later postponed to today. However, there are no negotiations today either.

Last Friday, EU members voted on the negotiating mandate for the Council. With 11 countries voting against a compromise position on Article 13 and Article 11, they failed to reach an agreement.

As a result, today’s round of final negotiations was canceled. This doesn’t mean that the controversial proposals will be shelved, but it creates another delay. And as time passes, opposition only seems to grow.

Early on, most protests came from the public at large and activist groups who believe that Article 13 will lead to broad upload filters, possibly censoring fair use content.

However, as lawmakers tried to seek compromises, various rightsholders were no longer happy and retracted their support as well. This includes movie and TV-companies, as well as music groups, which initially backed the proposal.

Copyright holders are still in favor of the original Article 13 text, but they believe that the latest proposals are watered down to a degree where they might be worse off than before.

The original Article 13 opponents, meanwhile, argue that it’s best to remove the article from the broader copyright reform proposals entirely and to do the same with Article 11, also known as the ‘link tax.’

Julia Reda, Member of the European Parliament for the Pirate Party, hopes for the latter.

The outcome of today’s Council vote also shows that public awareness of the copyright reform is having an effect, Reda writes.

“Keeping up the pressure in the coming weeks will be more important than ever to make sure that the most dangerous elements of the new copyright proposal will be rejected,” she adds.

While Article 13 is not off the table, it appears that the compromise strategy of EU lawmakers isn’t helping. And after today’s postponed vote, there will likely be more protests and lobbying efforts from both sides.

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

In July 2015, Portugal’s Ministry of Culture announced the signing of a an anti-piracy memorandum between the General Inspection of Cultural Activities (IGAC), the Portuguese Association of Telecommunication Operators (APRITEL), various rightsholder groups, the body responsible for administering Portugal’s .PT domain, and representatives from the advertising industry.

The aim of the memorandum was the creation of a super-streamlined anti-piracy mechanism which could be triggered following complaints from rightsholders. As a result, local anti-piracy outfit MAPINET regularly collates evidence on pirate site activities and ISPs block the platforms, with no court intervention required.

Since then, a huge number of sites have been blocked, with new domains added to the country’s unofficial blacklist every month. At the time of writing there are more than 1,900 sites blocked in the country, many on copyright grounds. Now, however, there appears to be a significant new addition to this controversial scheme.

With what appears to have been little if any public scrutiny, back in December a new agreement was signed between IGAC, APRITEL, and rightsholder groups including FEVIP and GEDIPE. The aim was the protection of live sports with the introduction of a regime to block ‘pirate’ streams of live sports broadcasts.

Discussions online indicate that those accessing recent live matches were interrupted by ISP blockades which prevented them from accessing unauthorized platforms. After being questioned by local publication Exame Informática, IGAC confirmed that the practice is indeed going ahead as per the December agreement.

“Live events, by their very nature and under penalty of futility, require a faster action of the entities involved in the course of unauthorized transmissions,” said IGAC Inspector General Silveira Botelho.

Botelho told the publication that the original memorandum wasn’t designed to combat illicit streams of live sports. The new agreement, however, operates on information obtained shortly before live events get underway, in order to block illicit transmissions more effectively.

As usual, rightsholders provide the initial notification to IGAC which then makes the decision whether or not to block the resource. Instructions are then handed to ISPs to block the online locations associated with the illegal streaming activities.

Unlike the regular blocking process, bans aren’t permanent but are lifted as soon as the events the rightsholders wish to protect have been concluded.

This appears to be similar to the blocking activities carried out in the UK by the Premier League and a pair of boxing promotions (1,2). The difference is that these are fully authorized by High Court injunction whereas the Portugal efforts are entirely voluntary.

“The agreement applies to all live events and is open to the inclusion of other entities that wish to contribute to the achievement of the objectives therein and to accept the respective terms and conditions,” says IGAC’s Botelho.

While all live events are covered by the memorandum, reports online suggest that only soccer matches have been affected thus far. The blocking was confirmed by Revolução dos Bytes (Bytes’ Revolution), the group behind SitesBloqueados.pt and site unblocking service Ahoy!, who told TorrentFreak that there has been a ‘huge’ increase in new detected blocked sites.

“I’m worried about this new easy and expedited way of blocking sites, it probably means that they have developed a new tool for this particular purpose, making the process of censoring sites less tedious and with even less red tape,” team member Henrique Mouta says.

“I don’t know how their system works behind the scenes, but I highly doubt that anyone is double checking if the site actually meets the criteria defined in the memorandum.”

In any event, the Ahoy! tool is still being updated to unblock affected sites, although Henrique says the team are having to do “a lot more work” to keep up with the increased volume.

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 six newcomers in our chart.

A Star is Born 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	(…)	A Star is Born	8.0 / trailer
2	(…)	Hunter Killer	6.7 / trailer
3	(1)	First Man	7.5 / trailer
4	(…)	The Girl in The Spider’s Web	6.1 / trailer
5	(2)	Aquaman (HDTC)	7.7 / trailer
6	(3)	Venom	7.0 / trailer
7	(…)	The Nutcracker and the Four Realms	5.6 / trailer
8	(…)	Bumblebee (Subbed HDRip)	7.2 / trailer
9	(4)	The Vanishing	6.0 / trailer
10	(…)	Bohemian Rhapsody (DVDScr)	8.3 / trailer

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

IPFS, short for InterPlanetary File System, has been around for a few years now.

While the name sounds alien to most people, it has a growing userbase among the tech-savvy.

In short, IPFS is a decentralized network where users make files available among each other. If a website uses IPFS, it is served by a “swarm” of people, much like BitTorrent users do when a file is shared.

The advantage of this system is that websites can become completely decentralized. If a website or other resource is hosted with IPFS, it remains accessible as long as the computer of one user who “pinned” it remains online.

The advantages of IPFS are clear. It allows archivists, content creators, researchers, and many others to distribute large volumes of data over the Internet. It’s censorship resistant and not vulnerable to regular hosting outages.

It’salso a perfect match for ‘pirate’ sites. The decentralized nature makes IPFS sites virtually impossible to shut down. This aspect was already highlighted by Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde, back in 2016.

“IPFS is really good and if everyone started using that instead it would be great. It would be working perfectly with less centralization. The problem is that the big sites like TPB and KAT are not really good at using new technology,” Sunde said.

KAT was shut down shortly after Sunde commented and while The Pirate Bay remains online, it now suffers more downtime than ever. Still, none of the major pirate sites have shown an interest in IPFS thus far.

There are others who’ve taken up this challenge though. A developer going by the handle ‘Urban Guacamole’ recently launched Torrent-Paradise, a torrent index which is powered with IPFS.

“I feel like decentralizing search is the natural next step in the evolution of the torrent ecosystem. File sharing keeps moving in the direction of more and more decentralization, eliminating one single point of failure after another,” he informs TF.

To start the site Torrent-Paradise used a copy of The Pirate Bay database. This was transformed into a searchable index with help from ipfsearch.xyz and the site’s operator has a DHT crawler which, at the moment, adds approximately 20,000 new torrents per day.

This all sounds positive but there are also some drawbacks.

One of the main hurdles is that IPFS has to be installed and configured if you want to become a node. This is a relatively easy process, but the average web user may not be familiar with using a command line to set it up, which is a requirement.

However, there are also IPFS gateways available. Cloudflare, for example, introduced one recently. This allows anyone to access sites such as Torrent-Paradise through a custom URL, but these people don’t help to share the site.

Another downside is that the static index which the site relies on is only updated once a day. This isn’t a technical restriction, but more a practical one. In theory, it could be updated in near real-time.

At the moment there’s both a regular Torrent-Paradise website, accessible to all, as well as an IPFS version which will remain ad-free. The site itself is fairly basic, but the real point of it is to showcase the power of decentralization.

The decentralization of file-sharing has been ongoing for decades. The BitTorrent protocol is decentralized, for example. And The Pirate Bay moved this further by removing its tracker and torrents, relying on DHT and magnet links instead.

“Decentralizing torrent search is next,” Urban Guacamole says, who believes that IPFS could become more common among torrent sites in the future.

Torrent-Paradise’s operator sees ‘availability’ as one of the main advantages. In this case, that goes hand in hand with being censorship resistant.

“Because each update of Torrent Paradise is an IPFS hash, it is impossible for anyone, including me, to take down the site. As long as there’s someone pinning it (the IPFS equivalent of seeding), the site will be available.”

Since the site started out as a Pirate Bay copy, rightsholders may eventually come in with complaints. While the site will comply with DMCA notices, it can’t control the hashes that are already shared in the network.

For the time being, Urban Guacamole plans to continue his work on the site. With a free domain name and Cloudflare support, it only costs roughly $4 a month, so the cost is not a factor.

Perhaps something for The Pirate Bay to consider?

“It most definitely would help them keep their site available when their servers are down,” Urban Guacamole says.

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

It’s certainly not difficult to see why Linkomanija is a major irritant to copyright holders in Lithuania and further afield.

For well over a decade the site has been a major force involved in the sharing of unlicensed content. Even today, despite years of conflict and attacks against the site, Linkomanija is not only Lithuania’s most popular torrent index but also the 18th most popular site in the country, period.

Now, however, copyright holders hope that traffic to the site can be brought under control with the introduction of a court-ordered ISP blockade.

The Lithuanian Copyright Protection Association (LATGA) began its blocking efforts against Linkomanija back in 2016 when it filed a lawsuit at the Regional Court of Vilnius demanding that several local ISPs prevent their subscribers from accessing the site.

In November 2017, the Court issued an order which required the country’s largest Internet providers including Telia, Bitė, LRTC, Cgates, Init, and Balticum TV, to start blocking access to the popular torrent tracker.

However, the Court ordered the costs associated with blocking to be borne by the plaintiff and with ISP Telia complaining that blocking the entire site (which has been used by rightsholders to distribute legal content) could amount to a restriction on free speech, an appeal was quickly on the cards.

After more than a year, the case has now been decided. ISPs will have to begin blocking Linkomanija with immediate effect.

“For two years, we have been in court with this Linkomanija case,” LATGA lawyer Andrius Iškauskas told Delfi.

“The court of first instance made a favorable decision for us, then it was appealed, and the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and essentially confirmed all our arguments that blocking Linkomanija is an appropriate and effective measure.

“This decision can still be appealed to the Supreme Court, but it is already valid and operators will have to execute it and block access to Linkomanija. I think that this decision will help to protect the rights of creators,” Iškauskas added.

LATGA director Jonas Liniauskas says that he’s pleased the Court listened to the concerns of rights holders and notes that legislative changes helped the case along.

“We are very pleased that the Lithuanian courts have finally heard authors who lose a large part of their income due to pirate activity,” he said.

“I have no doubt that such decisions have been greatly influenced by the amendments to the Lithuanian Law on Copyright and Related Rights, as well as European case law, which will make it possible to protect authors more effectively from pirates on the Internet.”

In common with all regions where the blocking of one site is ordered, further blocks against more sites are now expected in Lithuania.

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