Hollywood frequently stresses that piracy not only hurts the major studios, but also smaller independent productions.

While that may be true, for many independent artists obscurity is actually a bigger problem than piracy.

This idea is also shared by Lee Gardner, the Director and co-writer of the film “Adopting Trouble.” A digital copy of the film came out on Amazon this week where it can be rented for $0.99 or brought for $4.99.

The problem is, however, that people have to notice the film first. That’s a tough job when there’s virtually no marketing budget available. This is why Gardner and his team at Rare Legend Films decided to reach out to RARBG, one of the top torrent sites.

Realizing that pirates will get their hands on the film anyway, he sent the film’s master files to the site, whose in-house release group FGT turned those into torrents of varying qualities.

Aopting torrents…

The releases come with a special note from Gardner himself, who explains why his production company took this unconventional step.

“The thing they never tell you when you are making your film is that you won’t have enough money for marketing and without it, no-one will see your film. Maybe torrenters can fill that gap and spread the word on independent films,” he writes.

The director sees torrenters as trendsetters. This is why the film came out on RARBG before the official Amazon release. While there are no obligations, a donation or plug are welcome of course.

“So we are giving it to torrenters a little earlier than anyone else. If you like our movie. Please donate. Throw us a clam, a shekel or two. Tell your friends, your family and everyone you know,” Gardner adds.

Director’s message

Other filmmakers have shared their work on torrent sites in the past, and it’s always interesting to hear their motivations. Especially when they work directly with a site such as RARBG.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Gardner says that RARBG was the only site he reached out to. The director was already familiar with the site and knew that it displayed a list of newly released movies, so it was a good fit.

The reason is simple as well; it’s all about exposure.

“The worst thing for an independent filmmaker is if no one ever sees their film. We had a micro-budget for our film and it was mostly out of our own pockets with no interest from distribution companies since we have no name talent involved,” he says.

Without a marketing budget and knowing that the film would be pirated anyway, they felt like they had nothing to lose.

That said, Gardner certainly isn’t arguing that piracy helps the movie industry as a whole. However, it’s a reality that they have to deal with.

“I wish piracy didn’t exist but I don’t think it will ever go away. Our little three-man production company certainly doesn’t have the means or the time to go after people the way Hollywood does,” he says.

“Piracy clearly has an impact economically on filmmakers, theaters, and distribution companies, but I don’t know that anyone can say exactly how it affects everything.”

The effects of piracy can vary but so can the motivations of pirates. Gardner doesn’t believe everyone pirates because they refuse to pay. In part, it’s a sign of anti-establishment, but also skepticism about what’s being offered.

“I think many people are hesitant these days to spend money on movies, even Hollywood offerings. When I take my family of five out to the theater it’s hard if the movie is a letdown,” Gardner says.

For independent films, there is even more hesitance. People often have no clue what to expect. They often don’t know the directors, writers or actors. So there might be room for innovation there.

One option would be to allow people to watch the beginning of a movie for free, so they can decide whether it’s worth their money or not.

“We need to find solutions to ease that hesitancy and better support independent filmmakers. One solution could be a platform where a potential customer can see the first 20 minutes of a film for free,” Gardner notes.

As for “Adopting Trouble,” people can watch it entirely for free on RARBG and other torrent sites where it was uploaded. Those who like it can choose to make a donation or grab a copy on Amazon.

To avoid issues, Gardner stresses that his company will keep standard performance copyright. This means that others can’t take it and sell it elsewhere, as happened with “The Man From Earth: Holocene.”

It will be interesting to see whether the torrent release delivers the exposure Gardner hoped for.

If that’s the case it might be worth repeating in the future. That would also depend on other factors of course, as a sanctioned torrent release may be harder to pull off with outside investors in the project.

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TorrentFreak recently reported on the plight of developer Matt Huisman, the creator of what he believed to be a completely legitimate Kodi add-on.

Huisman created the ‘Showmax Add-on’ which provided access to content provided by Showmax, an online video subscription service launched in South African back in 2015. As a competitor to Netflix and Amazon Video, Showmax requires a paid subscription.

Despite suggesting that it wasn’t opposed to introducing a Kodi add-on of its own, Showmax never came up with the goods. So, after appeals from the company’s customers, Huisman took it upon himself to create an add-on so that Showmax users could conveniently view content inside Kodi.

The important thing to note is that the ‘Showmax Add-On’ was designed from the ground up to be non-infringing, in that it required all users to have a valid, paid-for subscription with Showmax. Nevertheless, Showmax recently asked anti-piracy company Irdeto (Denuvo’s owner) to take action against the add-on, filing complaints with both Huisman and Github, where the add-on had its official repository.

With the Showmax Add-On taken down from both Huisman’s site and Github, the matter was considered to be over. However, that clearly wasn’t the case. In a move that makes little sense, Irdeto has now filed an infringement complaint against Huisman with PayPal.

“We are contacting you as we have received a report that your website www.matthuisman.nz is currently infringing upon the intellectual property of Irdeto BV. Such infringement also violates PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy,” an email sent to Huisman by PayPal reads.

“If you feel your sales do not infringe upon the intellectual property rights of Irdeto BV, please complete the attached Objection to Infringement form.”

Huisman, who is the developer behind several similar projects, has a “Show me Love” page on his site, in which he invites fans to donate in appreciation of his work. He informs TorrentFreak that he never sold the Showmax Add-On and he’s shocked that Irdeto has taken such action.

“Irdeto have just had my PayPal (for donations) shut down. Wow! I wasn’t even selling [the Showmax] add-on,” he says.

Huisman is now required to file a counter-notice with PayPal in the hope of regaining full access to his account. However, PayPal has already warned him that if action isn’t taken soon, the company will “escalate” the matter.

“Failure to respond by the following date will result in the further escalation of this issue: December 01, 2018,” PayPal’s Brand Risk Management center advises.

On face value, this action by Showmax and Irdeto (who are both owned by corporate giant Naspers) is somewhat confusing.

It is perhaps understandable that they don’t want a third-party Kodi add-on being used to access their content (even though an account is still required), but going after a developer’s means to take donations for all of his projects is a measure usually reserved for fully-fledged ‘pirate’ sites.

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Takedown notices are a particularly useful tool for copyright holders who want to make sure that infringing copies of their work are not widely distributed.

Every single day, rightsholders and their representatives scour the web for references to pirated content, which aren’t hard to find.

These links are then reported to various online services, such as Google, requesting their operators to remove the allegedly infringing content. This system works well in theory but it’s being abused by scam-artists as well.

One of the most recent scams we’ve seen targets various popular game piracy sites, including skidrowgamereloaded.com, fitgirl-repacks.site, freegogpcgames.com, crotorrents.com, nosteam.ro, pcgames-download.com and skidrowreloaded.com.

The notices in question are seemingly sent by prominent names in the gaming industry, such as Steam and Ubisoft. However, the sudden flurry of takedown requests appears to be initiated by scammers instead.

TorrentFreak spoke to the operator of one of the affected sites who prefers to remain anonymous. He has been following the activity for a while and asked Google for information about a sender claiming to be Ubisoft.

Google revealed that this “Ubisoft” sent notices from suspicious Gmail addresses, using a Russian user interface, from an unidentified Ukrainian IP-address. In addition, the handle used in one of the email addresses can be linked to game-related spam, which doesn’t build any confidence either.

The site owner shared his findings with Google but the company repeatedly said that there is no option to file a counter notification.

This is because the notices are not regular DMCA takedowns. Instead, they are notifications that the URLs circumvent technological protection measures such as DRM, which is separately covered in the DMCA.

“Google has been notified that the following URLs distribute copyright circumvention devices in violation of 17 U.S.C. § 1201,” Google informed the site owner.

“Please find attached the notice we received. There is no formal counter notification process available under US law for circumvention, so we have not reinstated these URLs. If you dispute that you are distributing circumvention devices, please reply with a further explanation.”

Google is correct. The DMCA doesn’t prescribe a takedown and counter-notification scheme for DRM circumvention. While Google has voluntarily chosen to take the URLs offline, it is not required to offer a counter-notice option. This puts targeted sites at a severe disadvantage.

The site owner informs TorrentFreak that he’s been following a spamming operation for a few months. Interestingly, one of the email addresses from the takedown notices could also be matched to a scammer he had contact with in the past.

In addition to the Ubisoft notices, there are also similar requests from other popular brands such as Valve’s Steam. These notices also use the DRM circumvention argument and target popular game piracy sites.

“We are the owners of these copyrighted games listed below. These games were only created by our devlopers [sic] and sell exclusively on steampowered.com,” a Steam notice reads

Apart from the broken English and typo, this claim doesn’t really hold up. Steam or Valve are not the creators of many of the mentioned games, nor are they all exclusively sold on Steam.

One of the many notices

The end result of these fraudulent notices is that thousands of URLs have been wiped from Google’s search results by what appear to be scammers. In some cases, Google has rejected the requests, but many have been honored.

What certainly doesn’t help is that the allegations are not incorrect per se. Pirated games often circumvent DRM. However, the scammy notices are sent out for a different purpose.

One may wonder what the goal of these scammers is. While it’s hard to prove without a doubt, it looks like they are trying to get malicious sites ranked higher in search results.

According to our source, the scammers can be linked to a couple of pirate gaming sites which trick people into downloading cryptocurrency miners. These sites are, of course, not targeted by the fraudulent DMCA requests.

“I have been investigating those persons for a long time, and I can tell with proof that they are behind a massive spam attack spreading their miners. They are taking advantage of the lack of games cracks lately, creating websites claiming they provide cracked games, but all the links on these sites lead to cryptocurrencies miners,” he says.

TorrentFreak visited one of the sites which indeed featured a link that looks rather suspicious. According to Virustotal, it’s flagged as ‘Filetour’ by several anti-virus vendors. This is malware that launches in-browser mining sites.

As scammers remove Google search results for regular pirate gaming sites, these scammy alternatives get a better ranking and more traffic.

To add to the mess, the situation also caused some upheaval between pirate sites. One of the targeted sites suspects that competitor GoodOldDownloads is behind the notices. So, in a retaliatory move, they targeted the site in question with a series of counter-takedowns.

We have seen no sign that this is a matter of competition for a regular pirate site though, and neither has the site owner we have spoken to. Instead, it seems more likely that scammers are behind this scheme.

TorrentFreak contacted Ubisoft, Valve, and Google for a comment on the situation but none of the companies responded.

When we started working on this article none of the takedown requests were flagged as suspicious by Google, but that’s now starting to change. Google actively flagged several of the Steam and Ubisoft notices we referred to in our article.

“We believe that an impostor or someone else abusing the process submitted this request. We report it here for the sake of completeness and to provide a view into one kind of abuse of the DMCA process,” a notice in Google’s transparency report reads.

Interestingly, however, Google still lists the reported links as “removed” and it’s unclear if that will change.

Impostor

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With its massive library of research papers, Sci-Hub has been described as “The Pirate Bay of Science”.

The site is dedicated to providing open access to scientific knowledge, something which millions of individuals truly appreciate.

However, due to the copyrighted nature of much of the content provided by the platform, it has become public enemy #1 among academic publishers.

Site founder Alexandra Elbakyan’s mission is to tear down the paywalls for the good of humankind, a position that has been supported to varying degrees among academics themselves.

“When Sci-Hub became known, I thought that it will provide a good case against copyright law. When the law prevents science to develop, that law must be repealed,” Elbakyan wrote earlier this year.

That challenge to the law has seen Sci-Hub implicated in several copyright suits, including one filed by publishing giant Elsevier, three years ago. However, despite best efforts, Sci-Hub has remained online.

To tackle the site’s resilience, publishers have won ISP blocking orders in several jurisdictions, including Germany and more recently, Sweden. Now it is Russia’s turn to tighten the thumbscrews.

In a case filed recently by UK academic publisher Springer Nature Limited, the Moscow City Court was told that Sci-Hub is infringing the company’s copyrights and should, therefore, be subjected to blocking.

Listing “bulletproof” hosting company Quasi Networks Ltd and US-based CloudFlare as facilitating access to the site, Springer Nature complained that three specific works were being made available illegally by Sci-Hub.

The study papers that led to the block

As the above table obtained from the Court shows, the research papers cover topics of interest to the medical community in the spheres of heart and brain health – Effect of glucose-lowering therapies on heart failure, Nitric oxide signaling in cardiovascular health and disease, and Lactate in the brain: from metabolic end-product to signaling molecule.

These would ordinarily sit behind paywalls but thanks to Sci-Hub, their contents are available for everyone to absorb for free. It’s a situation that’s unacceptable to Springer Nature and the Moscow City Court was sympathetic to the company’s complaints.

A decision on preliminary interim measures was handed down last month, which compelled local telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor to take action to undermine “technical conditions that ensure placement, dissemination and other use of the works”.

As a result, several Sci-Hub and Library Genesis domains (gen.lib.rus.ec, www.libgen.io, scihub.unblocked.gdn, lgmag.org, libgen.unblocked.gdn, sci-hub.tw and libgen.io) are now being rendered inaccessible by Russian Internet Service Providers.

“Access to the Sci-Hub site in Russia is closed by Roscomnadzor. It turns out that Springer’s scientific publishing house filed a lawsuit demanding to restrict access to the portal,” Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan announced on social networks VK and Telegram.

Of course, Sci-Hub is no stranger to blocking efforts so has other domains up its sleeve. However, these can also be targeted by rightsholders, so Elbakyan encourages users to check for the latest updates.

“The spare domain sci-hub.se works but for how long, I can not guarantee. Therefore, to access Sci-Hub, use tools to circumvent Internet censorship – which you can search for in Google or by using the bot in Telegram: @scihubot,” Elbakyan concludes.

While Sci-Hub continues its mission to provide open access, it’s interesting to note the indirect effect the site is having on the academic community.

Last month, several prestigious European research councils announced a major push for Open Access publishing, designed to limit the influence of major copyright holders and “tear down” their paywalls.

On Thursday, Sci-Hub appeared to be completely offline everywhere. It is not clear what caused the outage.

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Last Tuesday Flixtor became unreachable after its domain nameservers were updated.

Initially, the domain name’s A records were removed, and later they were set to localhost, making the site unavailable.

Without any official word from the operators, many users feared that this could be the end of their favorite streaming site. This was particularly painful for those who paid for VIP access.

For these users, there is a glimmer of hope today. All of a sudden, the Flixtor website is accessible again. The usual list of movies and TV-shows is missing due to an unexplained catastrophe, but that will change.

“As you’ve probably noticed, Flixtor is down. And the way it was done is difficult to recover from. We’re pretty heartbroken because all the work and love we’ve put into it went down the drain,” the notice reads.

The Flixtor crew doesn’t provide any further details on what happened, but they’re working on a full return. The site will be rebuilt with new video software, a process that will likely take some time.

“We’re currently writing fresh new video software, setting up new hardware and we’ve started with the rebuild of our complete video library. Please be patient because unfortunately, this takes time.”

The old Flixtor

The team promises to compensate its VIP users when the site is back, encouraging them to keep their receipts around. Even for those without a receipt, they’ll figure something out.

As often happens when a site goes offline, many copycats appear. This hasn’t been any different in Flixtor’s case and the operators caution users to beware of these impostors.

“Please be aware that every other site claiming that they’re (the new) Flixtor is lying. It should be obvious because we don’t have advertisements, no pop-ups, no malware, no viruses, no tracking, no logging etc. And even if a site says they’re us and/or looks like us, it’s really not us,” they write.

Meanwhile, the Flixtor team apologizes for any inconvenience they have caused. They’re determined to make a comeback and if there’s an update on the relaunch date it will be posted on the site.

“We’ll be back. More resilient and better than ever,” they write.

Flixtor’s message

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