Since 2005, TorrentFreak has been a fairly popular source for file-sharing, piracy, and copyright-related news. It’s a project that takes up most of our lives and many hundreds of hours every month.

We love what we do and we’re grateful to every single one of our readers who help us by taking the time to read our articles and send us tips. Thanks folks, it really means a lot and we couldn’t do it without you.

As is obvious, everything we write is available on our website, for free, with no intrusive advertising, under a consumer-friendly Creative Commons license. Or, if one prefers, everything can be obtained via our regular mailings.

Over the past couple of years, however, TorrentFreak’s news has been made available via a couple of dozen other websites. Many operating in the relatively new ‘Kodi news’ niche, these sites take our articles the second they’re published and present them on their own platforms for the benefit of their own readers.

Under our CC license, anyone can do this for non-commercial purposes providing they link back to the source, but the vast majority are doing so for business reasons. Oddly enough, most of these are happy to link and politely quote the source.

In some cases, however, sites remove all references to TF from our articles while deliberately passing them off as written by their own “authors”. One site even goes as far as to run our pieces through word-replacement filters that chaotically obfuscate both the news and the source. That, admittedly, is really, really irritating.

This type of ‘piracy’ (we’ll use the term for convenience) presents an interesting thought exercise for us. Effectively, TorrentFreak wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for piracy. Indeed, if the piracy issue was solved tomorrow, we’d have nothing left to report.

So, with that being said, it’s ‘fun’ to have a little taste of what the entertainment industries have been dealing with for the past couple of decades. But, how we deal with this, is far removed from many of the popular strategies.

More than anyone and particularly in view our daily reporting, we know that there is plenty that can be done when people take your work and copy it online. Perhaps more importantly, however, just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you should.

Lawsuits solve nothing other than making lawyers rich. Trolling and settlement strategies are generally disgusting while acting tough on the Internet isn’t attractive for branding or image. And takedown notices – well – that game of whac-a-mole isn’t something we’d even consider as a solution.

What we do know, however, is that most people like to do the right thing. When people politely ask if they can use our content, the answer is always ‘yes’. We also know that when people take our pieces and place them on their own sites, we reach a wider audience – whether or not the operator of that site has linked to the source as we humbly request. Getting the news out there by any means has always been our number one priority.

But, more importantly, we would never like to be viewed in the same light as those who threaten and posture in order to get what they want. Piracy is here to stay and there is little to nothing anyone can do about it. Whether its movies, music or news articles, someone, somewhere will clone it and offer it to the public.

So, despite this article briefly focusing on what it’s like to be on the ‘other side’ of the piracy world for once, we can let everyone into a small secret: this article took longer to write than the whole time we’ve spent ‘worrying’ about the ‘piracy’ of our articles.

Sure, there are some objectionable sites republishing our stories that we would prefer our content not to be associated with, period, but life is too short for these kinds of distractions.

Our advice to people troubled by low-level piracy is to focus on what you do best and get on with it. Every second spent worrying about piracy is time that could’ve been spent creating something new. Sure, some people will come along and take a few views here and there but is it really worth kicking up a huge fuss over when it only distracts from the job?

Hardly.

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

Day in and day out copyright holders are flooding Google with DMCA takedown notices, pointing out links to pirated content.

While the volume has started to decrease over the past year or two, the numbers are still dazzling.

In 2018, copyright holders have reported around 700 million allegedly infringing links to the search engine. Most of these are processed swiftly, making the URLs unfindable in search results.

Since Google started counting in 2011, more than 160,000 copyright owners have used Google’s takedown tool. Together, they submitted more than 3.8 billion URLs. However, on closer inspection, it becomes clear that a small number of rightsholders are responsible for a lot of the action.

The UK music industry group BPI tops the list of most prolific ‘copyright owners’. It reported 425 million URLs over the years, which is more than 10% of all the reported pages.

The music groups APDIF Mexico and APDIF Brazil are listed in second and third place, with 252 million and 247 million reported links respectively. This means that the top three copyright owners are good for more than a billion reported links.

Top 3 “copyright owners.”

It’s clear that the high number of reported URLs is mostly driven by a small group of rightsholders.

To illustrate that, we found that the top 0.0001% of the most active copyright owners, which are 16 organizations, have reported more than 50% of all URLs.

It’s important to note that many of the reported links are not even in Google’s search results. Google processes non-indexed links and puts them on a blacklist, so they won’t be added in the future.

According to Google, the three reporting organizations (not copyright owners) that submitted the most URLs in 2017, all had non-index rates of more than 98%. As such, the billions of reported URLs don’t necessarily say something about the number of infringing links in Google’s index.

“While we will continue to act on these notices, they suggest that the volume of URLs we block is not a good proxy for the number of allegedly infringing links we serve,” Google previously noted.

It will be interesting to see how the takedown request volume evolves over time. Will the downward trend continue, or could the number of reported URLs start to grow again?

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

Back in 1991, when the World Wide Web (WWW) first became publicly available, few people knew what an impact it would have on the planet. Today, more than 27 years later, a world without the Internet is a prospect that even fewer people are prepared to consider.

There can be little doubt that the Internet is becoming greater by the day. Billions now rely on the network to fulfill what have become our most basic needs, with the free-flow of information enabling some of our greatest achievements in discovery, research, and education.

In 1994, when the Internet became publicly available in Sweden, it’s unlikely that even the people behind fledgling ISP Bahnhof could have envisioned what the web has become today. However, as one of Sweden’s first service providers, the company has since weathered many storms, particularly as the freedom of the Internet clashed with those who favor more restrictions, especially in respect of copyright enforcement.

For example, back in 2005 – when the war against file-sharing had really taken hold in Sweden – Bahnhof was effectively shut down as part of an anti-piracy raid. As a result, the company had harsh words for those involved, accusing the infamous Antipiratbyrån anti-piracy group of indirectly planting copyright-infringing content on servers connected to the company.

“How can Antipiratbyrån, which in the form of a lobby organization that works to curb the file-sharing culture, actively pay a person to upload tens of thousands of copyrighted files to a server that is then seized by the authorities?” CEO Jon Karlung asked at the time.

“It’s like distributing matches and petrol to a famous pyromaniac, then reporting him for a fiery fire when he’s heating a house.”

From this event, a pattern began to emerge. Bahnhof became an opponent of file-sharing crackdowns and a supporter of privacy, in 2009 famously refusing to store the IP addresses of customers so they could be pursued by the authorities.

A year later, Bahnhof became the proud host of Wikileaks, a controversial move given the organization’s efforts to expose secrets connected to the war raging in Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks. But it would be the company’s efforts to protect the privacy of its own subscribers that would grab most of the headlines.

In 2014, a landmark ruling from the European Court of Justice declared Europe’s Data Retention Directive a violation of Internet users’ privacy and therefore invalid.

The Directive had required ISPs to store data on the activities of their subscribers, including who they communicate with and at what times, plus other identifying information such as IP addresses. Bahnhof announced that it would stop capturing data with immediate effect.

Soon after, however, Swedish telecoms regulator PTS ordered Bahnhof to start storing communications data again under local data retention laws, warning the ISP that non-compliance would result in hefty fines. Bahnhof responded by offering its customers a free, no-logging VPN.

Ever since, Bahnhof has made headlines with its efforts to protect the privacy of its subscribers. The company also became an outspoken enemy of copyright trolls (1,2), labeling those who engage in the practice as greedy extortionists.

With the fight set to continue, Bahnhof CEO Jon Karlung says the company’s stance has its roots in being one of the longest-standing ISPs and a desire to keep the Internet open.

“I assume that our long-time fight comes from that we, once upon the time, were one of the first ISP’s existing. That era somehow represented a positive and genuine delight over what the big internet could be,” he tells TorrentFreak.

“I still remember those days. It’s not that everything was better before (I don’t think it was) but unfortunately many dark forces have taken over – or we are close to them doing so.”

It’s clear from Karlung’s comments that he sees his company as playing a role in defending the organic nature of the Internet against what he sees as a movement to sterilize the experience, often at the expense of privacy.

“One could reflect on this: What would happen if the Internet turned out to become a big cable-TV landscape controlled by Big Media, or if various and more and more commercial interests could ‘log in’ to your privacy?

“Or, if everything develops into a big totalitarian Truman Show where global cloud companies and states join forces in a nightmarish hunt against freedom of speech with Sauron like surveillance while investing in controlling the most profitable thoughts through social media, even if these thoughts enhance hate?”

As these and similar thoughts resonate with millions of freedom-loving individuals worldwide, Karlung clearly understands that he is in business too. The stance he’s taken means his company is not only seen as somewhat unique in the marketplace, it also earns plenty of merit points with current and future customers.

“As strange as it may sound, there is also a business idea in defending customers and their privacy. In the old days this could be described as the job of the mailman,” he concludes.

Somewhat ironically, Bahnhof itself is now the subject of a net-neutrality investigation in Sweden. After a court ordered the ISP to block websites related to Sci-Hub following a complaint from Elsevier, Bahnhof retaliated by partially blocking the academic publisher’s website.

Like many of Bahnhof’s moves in recent years, the aim is to defend the free Internet with the side-effect of provoking debate. Karlung says he’s looking forward to the discussions and has sent thanks to Sweden’s telecoms regulator for the opportunity.

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

A decade ago the vast majority of ‘pirate’ content was consumed after the fact but there has been a significant shift towards live TV programming in recent years, largely through IPTV and similar unlicensed services.

This phenomenon has proven a real thorn in the side of sports broadcasters who are desperate to preserve their live programming revenues. The Premier League, for example, has been hit by easy availability of unlicensed live streams, offered either for free or at a fraction of the official rates.

To counter this problem, in March 2017 the League obtained a blocking injunction from the High Court which compelled ISPs including BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media to block unauthorized streams under Section 97a of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.

A second order was handed down by the High Court in July 2017, which ran from August 12, 2017 to May 13, 2018. An extension was granted by the Court in July 2018.

This didn’t go unnoticed by other organizations in the same position. As reported here in September, sports promoter Matchroom Sport also obtained a similar High Court injunction enabling it to block illegal streams of fights for the next two years.

It now transpires that Queensbury Promotions, the home of Tyson Fury and legendary promoter Frank Warren, have followed Matchroom Sport by obtaining a similar order.

Granted on November 28, 2018, by Mr Justice Arnold with zero fanfare, the order requires BT, EE, Plusnet, Sky, TalkTalk, and Virgin Media to block live streams of forthcoming Queensbury promotions events in a similar manner to that outlined in the Matchroom Sport and Premier League cases.

While ISPs initially opposed blocking orders when they were first touted years ago, it’s notable that the first defendant in this case, BT, actually supported the blocking application. The other ISPs simply didn’t oppose, which made the order a relatively simple one to grant, albeit with a technical matter or two to address.

According to Justice Arnold, Showtime Networks entered into agreements with Queensberry and other third parties which saw Showtime as the broadcaster and copyright owner of the feed. Under the arrangement, however, he did not consider Queensbury to have an exclusive license. Ultimately this was overcome when Queensbury took an assignment of the right to bring proceedings from Showtime.

The order came into force ready for the Deontay Wilder v Tyson Fury fight which took place on December 1, 2018 and ended in a controversial split draw. Interestingly, however, widespread reports of blocking didn’t make an appearance, on the contrary in fact.

According to piracy-tracking firm MUSO, unauthorized streams of the fight were viewed ten million times – 1.1 million in the UK alone – with YouTube coming out on top as the leading provider. It is not clear whether those doing the blocking made any effort to target the Google-owned company but it seems likely that if they had, severe collateral damage would have ensued.

Moving forward, it appears that the ability of Queensbury to tackle piracy of events in this manner will continue until December 1, 2020, meaning that illegal Wilder v Fury rematch streams might….might….find themselves affected.

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

in September 2013, H33T.com, one of the Internet’s most-visited torrent sites at the time, disappeared from the web .

Although the downtime was initially shrouded in mystery, it later became clear that the site had been targeted in a copyright infringement action.

In order to stop the distribution of a copy of Robin Thicke’s album Blurred Lines, Universal Music had obtained an injunction against Key-Systems, a German-based registrar where the H33t.com domain name was registered.

Key-Systems wasn’t happy with the ruling and the precedent it set but had no other option than to comply. However, the company informed us at the time that it would appeal the verdict, hoping to have it lifted.

This was the start of a drawn-out legal battle from which the latest ruling was just released.

The Higher Regional Court of Saarbrücken concluded Key-Systems can be held secondarily liable for the infringing actions of a customer if it fails to take action if rightsholders point out “obvious” copyright infringing activity online.

This means that, if a site owner is unresponsive to takedown requests, Key-Systems and other registrars can be required to take a domain name offline, even when the infringing activity is limited to a single page.

The local music group BVMI is happy with the outcome of the case. They believe it will help copyright holders to take action against infringing activity.

“This is a further important clarification in the legal space of the internet, helping it to become clearer and fairer for creatives and their partners,” says René Houareau, BVMI’s Managing Director Legal & Political Affairs.

“The [court] affirms, with clearly outlined criteria, the responsibility of so-called registrars and thus gives affected rightsholders an important legal tool to defend themselves against the unlawful use of their content on the internet.”

For H33T the case is no longer relevant. The site did make a comeback after the initial problems, first at H33T.eu and later at H33t.to. However, two years later it disappeared for good.

That said, the German ruling can affect other sites and registrars as well. In fact, in a similar legal battle, domain registrar 1 API lost a case earlier this year, which required it to disconnect several Pirate Bay-related domains.

The domains in question include thepiratebay.gd, thepiratebay.la, thepiratebay.mn, and thepiratebay.vg. These were already disabled years ago, and are no longer in use, but it confirms that registrars can be required to take action against pirate sites.

Lawyer Mirko Brüß notes that, in this case, the court clarified that registrars not only have to take a domain offline, they should also prevent it from being transferred to another company.

Pirate Bay’s former registrar 1 API was not allowed to appeal the case any further, but Key-Systems still has the option to take the case to the German Federal Court. This means that the H33T case may not be over yet.

TorrentFreak reached out to Key-Systems for a comment and to ask if it plans to fight the issue at the highest court, but we have yet to hear back.

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