While it’s not getting making big headlines in the mainstream media, US courts are still loaded with BitTorrent related lawsuits.

The cases are filed by a small group of copyright holders. To state their claim, these companies generally rely on IP-addresses as evidence.

These IP-address details are collected from BitTorrent swarms and linked to a geographical location using geolocation tools. With this information in hand, rightsholders ask the courts to grant a subpoena, forcing Internet providers to hand over the personal details of the associated account holder.

This process isn’t new and the same tactics have been used for years. While some federal judges have raised doubts about the accuracy and sufficiency of IP-address evidence, many others let the cases continue.

In recent weeks, however, more and more judges have begun to ask questions.

This started after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reached a verdict in Cobbler Nevada v. Gonzales. The Court ruled that identifying the registered subscriber of an IP-address by itself is not enough to argue that this person is also the infringer.

“Because multiple devices and individuals may be able to connect via an IP address, simply identifying the IP subscriber solves only part of the puzzle. A plaintiff must allege something more to create a reasonable inference that a subscriber is also an infringer,” the verdict read.

What this “something more” should be was not clarified, but the order didn’t go unnoticed. In recent weeks several district courts have cited the ruling, requesting copyright holders to come up with “something more” as well.

Just last week, US District Judge Sara Ellis dismissed a complaint Malibu Media had filed for this very reason.

“This Court agrees with the Ninth Circuit and those courts that have found that a plaintiff must allege more than simply the registration of an IP address to an individual in order to proceed against that individual for copyright infringement,” Judge Ellis wrote.

Malibu Media, one of the most prolific filers of BitTorrent lawsuits, was given the opportunity to amend the complaint with new details, but those will have to tie the defendant to the alleged infringement.

The company had already amended the complaint previously, showing that the IP address was the source of a persistent pattern of copyright infringement. That, however, was not enough.

In Nevada, US Magistrate Judge Nancy Koppe also highlighted the Gonzales ruling. A request for a subpoena by Strike 3 Holdings was denied because an IP-address alone is not enough.

“In the context of BitTorrent copyright infringement, the Ninth Circuit has recently held that a plaintiff bears the burden of pleading factual allegations that create a reasonable inference that the defendant is the infringer.

“Hence, a complaint that traces infringement to a particular IP address and pleads that the IP address is registered to the defendant is insufficient to state a claim,” Judge Koppe adds.

Over in Washington, District Judge Thomas Zilly asked for “something more” as well, in an order that spans twelve cases and dozens of defendants. Again, referencing the Appeals Court’s Gonzales ruling.

The rightsholder in those cases, Venice PI, did respond with further details.

The company said that it gathered various other details including download history and the layout of the residence and neighborhood, which make it likely that the account holder is the infringer. Whether that’s good enough remains to be seen.

What’s clear though is that the Appeals Court ruling is being used by courts across the country to demand “something more” than an IP-address alone.

While this is not the end of so-called “copyright trolling” practices just yet, it does make it harder for rightsholders to convince the courts.

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 safe to say that Swedish ISP Bahnhof is one of the most aggressive companies when it comes to defending its customers from interference initiated by outside parties.

The ISP is an outspoken critic of copyright trolls and has taken a number of measures to ensure that it’s extremely difficult for them to identify Bahnhof subscribers. It also believes in the open Internet and by extension is against site-blocking efforts on copyright grounds.

In November, however, it became clear that Bahnhof would be joining the ranks of other blocking ISPs after a court ordered it to block a series of domain names following a complaint from academic publisher Elsevier.

At the time, CEO Jon Karlung told TorrentFreak that the “horrifying” decision, which targets Sci-Hub domains including sci-hub.tw, sci-hub.mu, sci-hub.se, libgen.io, “goes against the soul of the Internet.”

A clearly incensed Karlung then did something that has never been done before. In a retaliatory move, he prevented his subscribers from accessing the official Elsevier.com website directly, sending them instead to a landing page containing an advisory notice about blocking and an option to click through. This was done to give the publisher a taste of its own medicine.

The maverick businessman didn’t stop there though. On top, he ordered his team to ensure that users of the court’s network could no longer access Bahnhof’s website. These protests were designed to provoke a debate about net neutrality and that, it now transpires, is something that will come to pass.

An announcement by the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS), which acts as the national watchdog for the electronic communications and postal sectors, reveals that it has launched an investigation into Bahnhof’s actions.

“The Post and Telecom Agency (PTS) is investigating whether the internet service provider Bahnhof has taken measures to influence access to websites,” PTS says.

“A key rule in EU regulations in this area is that all traffic on the Internet should be treated equally by providers of internet connection services. PTS’s task is to monitor and ensure that the provisions on an open internet, also called network neutrality, are complied with.”

Noting that Bahnof has implemented measures that have restricted access to websites, PTS says it is now investigating whether Bahnhof breached net neutrality rules.

After being adopted on November 25, 2015 and coming into force on April 30, 2016, Regulation (EU) 2015/2120 enshrined net neutrality provisions into EU law, including non-discriminatory traffic management.

PTS says it will seek to detemine if Bahnhof’s actions are in line with the Telecoms Single Market Regulation, noting that ISPs may not block, alter, or discriminate against specific content.

ISPs in the EU are, however, able to implement traffic management measures beyond those that are normally considered “reasonable” in order to comply with legal requirements, such as blocking sites in response to a court order.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Karlung says the situation can be interpreted as “the essence” of irony.

“Bahnhof gets a legal threat to block sites out there somewhere on this huge computer network called the Internet. We block the sites because in reality there is no legal chance to win cases against the copyright mob, since the judge and court are corrupt, and it also comes with a package of astronomic fines,” he explains.

Karlung says that the PTS appears most interested in the ‘counter-blocking’ of Elsevier, which he characterizes as a “fine opportunity” to tell people about the dangers of site-blocking which targets “the soul and core” of the Internet.

“[Blocking] also jeopardizes the principle for ISP’s to be able to operate services. The ISP can never be responsible for content, or what people are doing somewhere out there on the Internet.”

Bahnhof’s CEO says he hasn’t yet seen any formal questions or demands from PTS about his company’s “counter-blocking” but it’s clear he’ll relish the chance to bring this issue to the attention of a wider audience.

“We will of course not let this go unnoticed, and I heartfully thank PTS for this fine opportunity,” Karlung concludes.

PTS says it will be sending questions to Bahnhof which will require a response by January 17, 2018.

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 four newcomers in our chart.

First Man 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	(…)	First Man	7.6 / trailer
2	(1)	Venom	7.0 / trailer
3	(4)	Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle	6.8 / trailer
4	(…)	A Simple Favor	7.0 / trailer
5	(3)	The Predator	5.6 / trailer
6	(…)	Night School	5.5 / trailer
7	(…)	Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald	6.9 / trailer
8	(7)	Mission: Impossible – Fallout	8.0 / trailer
9	(5)	Smallfoot	6.7 / trailer
10	(9)	The Equalizer 2	6.9 / trailer

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

Privately raising cash to bring ideas and projects to fruition can be a daunting task. Convincing potential investors is rarely easy, with many demanding a large piece of the final pie in return.

To help solve this problem, in 2009 US-based Kickstarter was born, a site that has developed into a global crowdfunding platform where anyone can throw a few dollars at projects they believe could enjoy future success.

According to current stats, the site has received pledges exceeding four billion dollars from more than 15.5 million backers, which have funded more than 155,000 individual projects. One of those is campaign formerly known as The Monster Book of Monsters Film Project.

“THE MONSTER BOOK OF MONSTERS is a collection of 100 stories from around the world, inspired by the legendary book from the Harry Potter universe,” the Kickstarter read until recently.

“These aren’t your everyday Werewolves and Wendigos either. Each story is told by the survivor of an encounter with a unique and mysterious creature more wild and varied than you can imagine. From the twisted minds of 70 authors including Amazon Best Sellers: Tobias Wade, Blair Daniels, Tara Devlin, and P.F. McGrail. As well as numerous Reddit NoSleep award winners.”

The initial campaign

The idea of the campaign is to raise funds that will go towards a ‘sizzle reel’, a short video highlighting a vision and tone for a proposed movie or TV show.

“This reel will be pitched to large production companies in an effort to launch a horror inspired anthology TV series. The more money raised- the better the reel!” the Kickstarter reads.

The campaign had a modest target of just $3,997 dollars, which was easily reached a few days ago and well in advance of the January 1, 2019 deadline. However, the project appears to have landed on the radar of Warner Bros. who expressed displeasure at the Harry Potter references in the fundraiser.

In a takedown notice sent to Kickstarter, the movie company alleged copyright infringement by the campaign due to its use of a book title featured in the movie Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Citing itself as the owner of “The Harry Potter series of books and motion pictures, and all elements contained therein. Including, but not limited to, the ‘Monster Book of Monsters’,” Warner demanded action from the crowd-funding platform.

“This project identifies itself as ‘inspired by the legendary book from the Harry Potter universe’ and uses the original title created by Ms. Rowling,” Warner complained.

While it’s unclear whether Kickstarter temporarily took the campaign down, the complaint from Warner certainly prompted the team behind it into action. References to all things Harry Potter have now been removed, as the image below shows.

More Warner-friendly now…

Additionally, the text proclaiming that “THE MONSTER BOOK OF MONSTERS is a collection of 100 stories from around the world, inspired by the legendary book from the Harry Potter universe” has now been transformed into a more basic “collection of 100 horror stories from around the world.”

Finally, the campaign has also amended its end goal statement. That was originally to have a “‘NoSleep’ inspired TV show”, a reference to Reddit’s NoSleep sub where people share their own scary stories. The edited aim is to have a straightforward “horror TV show”, although references to Reddit elsewhere in the campaign remain.

Warner Bros. are notoriously protective over their lucrative Harry Potter interests. Earlier this year the company’s lawyers told an annual Harry Potter festival held in Denmark that it could no longer use names and images related to the Harry Potter movies.

In 2009, Warner Bros. took action against a London-based single-mother after she dared to organize a Harry Potter-themed Halloween dinner. It’s unclear whether the sarcastically rebranded “Generic Wizard” night managed to sell out as planned.

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

Thanks to wonders of DHT and PEX, public torrents can be shared among millions of people without a need for a dedicated tracker.

However, the existence of standalone trackers is always a plus for torrent users, since these servers are able to put sharers in touch with each more quickly, speeding up the discovery and distribution of similar content.

Public trackers of this type are in short supply so it was a big blow to the sharing community when Leechers Paradise recently announced its closure.

After 12 years in the game, the site’s operator revealed that he’d had enough. Citing concerns over the EU’s Article 13 legislation and problems with hosting such a resource-hungry platform, ‘Eddie’ said goodbye to the torrent world. After recently serving up to 132 million peers in a single day in July, the news was significant.

Now, however, an unexpected light has appeared at the end of the tunnel. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Eddie has confirmed that Leechers Paradise will be making a comeback, albeit with a brand new owner.

“I am happy to announce that a college in the space has picked up the domains from me and will continue to carry the flame,” Eddie says, without providing specifics for security reasons.

“A person who is currently running a rather large OpenBitTorrent tracker will continue the work. However, due to this person operating two large trackers, he doesn’t want his name mentioned because he is afraid he will become too big of a target.”

Starting off anonymously with his new venture is not something that Eddie considered necessary when he launched Leechers Paradise well over a decade ago. Indeed, he took no precautions to hide who he was, something which he later came to regret.

“I would like to clarify that one of the reasons to quit was that my actual full-name and address was on the domain. This was no issue 12 years ago but these days with more and more copyright laws it has become more of an issue,” he explains.

“I have received physical mail from multiple copyright protection agencies in the past. However, this is not the reason for me to stop operating, as I have complied with their demands and continued to be on the right side of law.”

During our earlier coverage, we noted how the closure of Leechers Paradise should come as a disappointment to millions of users. However, due to its magic being worked largely behind the scenes, many won’t appreciate exactly what it did, nor the effort that was put in.

“It has been a mostly thankless job which I have gladly done,” Eddie says.

“However, the costs and risks have become too great to continue. The new owner will be able to hide his identity and therefore vastly limit the risk. I wish him the best.”

It is not yet clear when Leechers Paradise will be in the hands of its new owner but we understand that users won’t have too long to wait. TorrentFreak is informed that the domains are currently being transferred while a new server could be up in a matter of days.

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