Regular TorrentFreak readers know that website blocking is rampant around the globe.

Thousands of pirate sites have been blocked by court orders for offering access to infringing content. However, there are plenty of voluntary blocking measures as well.

Some Internet providers offer web filtering tools to help their customers avoid malware, adult content, pirate services, or other suspicious content. Comcast’s Xfinity Xfi service, for example, has a “protected browsing” feature.

While this can be useful in some situations, it’s far from perfect. The blocklists that are used can be quite broad. Websites are sometimes miscategorized or flagged as dangerous while that’s not the case.

This also appears to be happening with Xfinity’s protected browsing feature. A reader alerted us that, when he tried to access TorrentFreak, access was denied stating that a “suspicious” site was ahead.

A pirate logo on the blocking page suggests that there’s copyright-infringing activity involved. While it’s no secret that we cover a lot of news related to piracy, it goes a bit far to label this type of news reporting as suspicious.

Suspicious…..

While we don’t know whether the blockade is intentional or a false positive, this is certainly not the only ‘problem’ with Xfinity’s protected browsing feature.

Previously, Comcast users reported that this system prevented people from accessing PayPal as well, which is a bit much, and others reported that it stopped the Steam store from loading properly.

The good news is that the blocking ‘feature’ isn’t mandatory. Subscribers can enable and disable it whenever they please, by changing their network settings.

Unfortunately, Xfinity’s blocking efforts are not unique. We regularly get reports from users who can’t access TorrentFreak because it’s blocked, often on public WiFi networks. In these and other cases, a VPN can always come in handy.

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

The Pirate Bay is touted as one of the most resilient torrent sites. While it has indeed weathered many storms, occasional downtime is no longer an exception, as became clear again this week.

This can be quite frustrating for users, including software developer TechTac, who came up with a simple but effective solution: OfflineBay.

Simply put, OfflineBay is a multi-platform application that people can install on their local computer. As the same suggests, it helps users to store a copy of all Pirate Bay torrents locally, in case the site does down.

The idea for the tool started a few weeks ago when TechTac realized that he had quite a bit of his monthly bandwidth quota left. However, as The Pirate Bay and other sites were down, he was unable to download anything through the usual channels.

“All of that remaining quota went to waste. Only if I had a tool like OfflineBay at that moment. So I thought ‘Never again’ and ended up developing this tool,” TechTac tells TorrentFreak.

The end result is an application that allows users to search and download Pirate Bay torrents, without having to use the website. Instead, the application searches through the publicly available TPB dump file, which users have to download first.

This means that only those torrents that were available at the time of the latest dump file update will be in the local database as a backup, in case TPB and other major torrent indexes go down.

OfflineBay

“OfflineBay is designed to discover torrents when online torrent search providers are not available. Torrents will be available up to the time the last dump file was created,” TechTac says.

The developer realizes that downloading and updating the dump file, which is just under 100 MB in size, is a major drawback. While he considered automating the process, there’s not really an elegant way to implement that at the moment.

This may change in the future though. TechTac will continue to develop the software. While it’s closed source at the moment, open sourcing the code is under consideration for the future.

One of the most interesting plans is to use a blockchain for this project. This would mean that the torrent database is stored and shared among users, without the need to import a dump file.

“I’m planning to move this project to the blockchain so it won’t be depending on the dump file anymore. This is the ultimate goal,” TechTac tells us.

These types of changes require a lot of time though, and that’s proven to be a bottleneck. TechTac is doing all the work on his own right now but he hopes that other developers will join the project.

“Currently, I’m the only one developing this tool. I can’t handle this on my own anymore. Waiting for more developers to get in contact. There’s a lot to discuss,” he says.

The official OfflineBay announcement and related information are available in the Pirate Bay forums over at Suprbay, where it was posted with permission of the Pirate Bay crew.

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

While site-blocking on copyright infringement grounds is now widespread, in most countries it requires intervention from the courts.

The process nearly always involves rightsholders grouping together with claims that customers of ISPs are infringing their rights by using ‘pirate’ sites to obtain movies, TV shows and music. As such, it isn’t pirate sites that are targeted by rightsholder legal action, but the ISPs themselves.

Of course, none of the ISPs targeted are breaking the law by providing access to the sites. However, the demands for a blocking injunction frame the ISPs as the wrong-doers, even if there is an underlying understanding that the pirate sites themselves are the issue. For this reason, ISPs around the world have regularly found themselves in an adversarial process.

In the Netherlands, for example, ISPs took their fight to the highest court in Europe to avoid blocking but will almost certainly fail after spending large sums of money. In others, such as the UK where the blocking process has matured, ISPs rarely object to anything, smoothing the process for both them and the rightsholders.

With the knowledge that site-blocking injunctions are likely to be granted by national courts in Europe, rightsholders and ISPs in Belgium now appear to be taking a collaborative approach. Sites have been blocked in the country before but future blocking efforts will be much easier to implement if a case before the Commercial Court of Brussels runs to plan.

It involves the Belgian Entertainment Association (BEA) on one side and ISPs Proximus, Telenet and VOO on the other. Rather than squabbling over the details, it appears that the parties will jointly present a list of 33 websites and 450 domain names to a judge, alongside claims that they facilitate the illegal downloading of copyrighted material.

According to a report from L’Echo (paywall), the companies hope to avoid complex and costly legal proceedings by working together and accepting the inevitability of a blocking injunction.

The case has been running for a year already but during a hearing before the Commercial Court of Brussels this week, Benoît Michaux, lawyer for the Belgian Entertainment Association, explained the new approach.

“The European legislator has put in place a mechanism that allows a national judge to request injunctions to order the providers to block access to the websites in question”, Michaux said.

After being presented to the Court, the list of sites and domains will be assessed to determine whether they’re acting illegally. Michaux said that the parties have settled on a common approach and have been able to identify “reasonable measures” that can be ordered by the Court that are consistent with case law of the European Court of Justice.

“This joint request is a little unusual, things are changing, there is a certain maturation of minds, we realize, from all sides, that we must tackle the problem of piracy by blocking measures. There is a common vision on what to do and how to handle piracy,” he said.

While the ISPs are clearly on a path of cooperation, L’Echo reports that concerns over possible breaches of the E-Commerce Directive mean that the ISPs don’t want to take action against the sites themselves without being ordered to do so by the Court.

“The responsible actors want to demonstrate that it is possible to stop piracy through procedural law,” says Benoît Van Asbroeck, lawyer for Proximus and Telenet.

The Court is expected to hand down its judgment within a month. Given the cooperation on all sides, it’s likely to be in favor of mass site-blocking.

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

The Oscars are the most watched awards show of the year, closely followed by hundreds of millions of movie fans around the world.

This weekend Hollywood’s finest are gathering on the red carpet once again. While they associate the celebration with eternal fame and recognition, online pirates are keeping an eye on it as well.

Traditionally, Oscar winners see a surge in piracy activity, so we decided to take a look at the availability of this year’s nominees through unauthorized channels.

Relying on data released by Oscar piracy watcher Andy Baio, we see that all nominated* films are now available on pirate sites, most in decent quality too. There are just three films that haven’t been released as a screener, Blu-ray or other high-quality rip, including the highly anticipated “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.”

That all films are readily available isn’t really new. This has happened consistently over the past decade. This year, however, that tradition was nearly broken. A pirated copy of “The Breadwinner” only leaked last week.

On the screener front, there’s not much movement. Like previous years, most of the leaked screeners have been released by Hive-CM8. A dozen screeners of Oscar nominees are available on pirate sites at the time of writing.

Screener leaks 2003 – 2018

There is another trend visible, however, one which we didn’t immediately expect.

The number of Cam releases, which are recorded in movie theaters, is on the rise. This year 20 camcorded (Cam) copies of Oscar contenders have leaked, which is a record high for the last decade.

As Cams usually come out early, when films are still playing in theaters, Hollywood sees these leaks as a great threat.

Cam leaks 2003 – 2018

The same increase is also visible for Telesync releases, which are higher-quality Cam releases that use a direct sound input. There have been 14 Telesync leaks for the 2018 Oscar contenders, which is a significant uptick compared to previous years.

While these releases reach millions of people they tend to originate from a small circle. As the Hive-CM8 situation has shown, one group can make an enormous impact on the numbers.

This also means that next year’s figures can easily turn around if one or two prominent sources are cut off.

—

^{* – Foreign film and documentary categories are not included}

^{– The high quality leak of Ferdinand was not included in Baio’s data at the time of writing, but it was included in the analysis above.}

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

Over the past several years, Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN has been engaged in continuous legal action against local ISPs Ziggo and XS4All. BREIN felt they should block The Pirate Bay to reduce copyright infringement but the ISPs felt blocking was disproportionate.

The case went all the way to the Supreme Court and then to the EU Court of Justice for clarification. Last June, the ECJ ruled that as a platform effectively communicating copyright works to the public, The Pirate Bay can indeed be blocked by ISPs.

The case will go back to the Supreme Court which is likely to give permanent blocking the go ahead. However, BREIN wanted a blocking decision more quickly and got one last September when The Hague Court of Appeal told Ziggo and XS4All to block The Pirate Bay pending a Supreme Court decision.

With The Pirate Bay blocked by the ISPs from September last year, BREIN has been monitoring the effect of the blockade on traffic to the site. In a statement, the anti-piracy outfit suggests that blocking is doing its job.

“Monitoring by ComScore shows that the number of unique visitors to thepiratebay.org from the Netherlands has dropped by more than 40% between September 2017 and December 2017 after internet providers Ziggo and XS4ALL were ordered by the court to demand access to the site on the basis of BREIN’s claim,” BREIN writes.

Ziggo is the largest cable operator in the Netherlands and XS4All one of the longest standing, so it comes as no surprise to learn that traffic to The Pirate Bay’s main domain has been hit. However, since the site can be accessed in numerous different indirect ways, including via proxies, mirrors and VPNs, to name a few, does BREIN’s claim that “blocking works” still hold water?

According to BREIN director Tim Kuik, yes it does.

“We also are blocking many proxies and mirrors. There is a whole list of them which also changes. New ones are added and others may be deleted,” Kuik informs TF.

“The monitoring compares like with like and shows a trend that correlates with other sources. I think this trend holds true for all blocked sites.”

So, to be clear, the 40% does not represent a drop in Dutch traffic to The Pirate Bay’s site and/or content overall, it only represents traffic which goes directly to the specific thepiratebay.org domain. Anyone circumventing the blockade isn’t counted.

Of course, that’s not to say that the overall traffic numbers from the Netherlands aren’t down as well, but there are no public figures to prove that one way or another. The precise impact of proxies and mirrors is also unclear but Kuik thinks that the blockades themselves send a message.

“Bypassing a blockade requires users to take action to illegally download and it is now clear that they are committing a criminal offense and most people do not want that,” he says.

VPNs are undoubtedly an effective unblocking solution for some but Kuik doesn’t believe they represent a big threat, currently at least.

“We think VPN use is not common under the average user, that is more something for the hardcore and not all of those will use it for access to illegal sources,” he informs TF.

While BREIN is fairly relaxed about VPNs for now, the group suggests it could take action if they begin to pose a risk to the site-blocking regime they’ve fought so hard for.

“If it becomes problematic, blocking could in principle also be demanded from VPN services,” Kuik warns.

Given the 40% figure and the caveats above, it is likely that the direct traffic figure to The Pirate Bay’s domain will fall again in the months to come. Mid-January a Dutch court ruled that local Internet providers KPN, Tele2, T-Mobile, Zeelandnet and CAIW must follow Ziggo and XS4All by also blocking The Pirate Bay.

There’s no doubt that blocking has at least some effect on direct traffic to pirate sites and it’s clear that entertainment industry groups feel it’s essential as part of a bigger anti-piracy toolkit.

Thus far, however, pirates have proven to be extremely resilient so the Netherlands will probably need further action against a much broader range of sites if blocking is to have any meaningful effect.

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