VLC is the media player of choice for Internet users around the globe. Downloaded for desktop at least 2,493,000,000 times since February 2005, VLC is an absolute giant. And those figures don’t even include GNU/Linux, iOS, Android, Chrome OS or Windows Phone downloads either.

Aside from its incredible functionality, VLC (operated by the VideoLAN non-profit) has won the hearts of Internet users for other key reasons, not least its commitment to being free and open source software. While it’s true to say that VLC doesn’t cost a penny, the term ‘free’ actually relates to the General Public License (GPL) under which it’s distributed.

The GPL aims to guarantee that software under it remains ‘free’ for all current and future users. To benefit from these protections, the GPL requires people who modify and redistribute software to afford others the same freedoms by informing them of the requirement to make source code available.

Since VLC is extremely popular and just about as ‘free’ as software can get, people get extremely defensive when they perceive that a third-party is benefiting from the software without adhering to the terms of the generous GPL license. That was the case beginning a few hours ago when veteran Reddit user MartinVanBallin pointed out a piece of software on the Google Play Store.

“They took VLC, put in ads, didn’t attribute VLC or follow the open source license, and they’re using Media Player Classics icon,” MartinVanBallin wrote.

The software, found here, is called 321 Media Player and has an impressive 4.5 score from more than 101,000 reviews. Despite not mentioning VLC or the GPL, it is based completely on VLC, as the image below (and other proof) shows.

VLC Media Player 321 Media Player

TorrentFreak spoke with VideoLAN President Jean-Baptiste Kempf who confirmed that the clone is in breach of the GPL.

“The Android version of VLC is under the license GPLv3, which requires everything inside the application to be open source and sharing the source,” Kempf says.

“This clone seems to use a closed-source advertisement component (are there any that are open source?), which is a clear violation of our copyleft. Moreover, they don’t seem to share the source at all, which is also a violation.”

Perhaps the most amazing thing is the popularity of the software. According to stats provided by Google, 321 Media Player has amassed between five and ten million downloads. That’s not an insignificant amount when one considers that unlike VLC, 321 Media Player contains revenue-generating ads.

Using GPL-licensed software for commercial purposes is allowed providing the license terms are strictly adhered to. Kempf informs TF that VideoLAN doesn’t mind if this happens but in this case, the GPL is not being respected.

“A fork application which changes some things is an interesting thing, because they maybe have something to give back to our community. The application here, is just a parasite, and I think they are useless and dangerous,” Kempf says.

All that being said, turning VLC itself into adware is something the VideoLAN team is opposed to. In fact, according to questions answered by Kempf last September, the team turned down “several tens of millions of euros” to turn their media player into an ad-supported platform.

“Integrating crap, adware and spyware with VLC is not OK,” Kempf informs TF.

TorrentFreak contacted the developer of 321 Media Player for comment but at the time of publication, we were yet to receive a response. We also asked for a copy of the source code for 321 Media Player as the GPL requires, but that wasn’t forthcoming either.

In the meantime, it appears that a small army of Reddit users are trying to get something done about the ‘rogue’ app by reporting it as an “inappropriate copycat” to Google. Whether this will have any effect remains to be seen but according to Kempf, tackling these clone versions has proven extremely difficult in the past.

“We reported this application already more than three times and Google refuses to take it down,” he says.

“Our experience is that it is very difficult to take these kinds of apps down, even if they embed spyware or malware. Maybe it is because it makes money for Google.”

Finally, Kempf also points to the obviously named “Indian VLC Player” on Google Play. Another VLC clone with up to 500,000 downloads, this one appears to breach both copyright and trademark law.

“We remove applications that violate our policies, such as apps that are illegal,” a Google spokesperson informs TorrentFreak.

“We don’t comment on individual applications; you can check out our policies for more information.”

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

Today is Safer Internet Day, a global awareness campaign to educate the public on all sorts of threats that people face online.

It is a laudable initiative supported by the British Association for Screen Entertainment (BASE) which, together with the children’s charity Into Film, has released an informative video.

The organizations have created a British version of an animation previously released as part of the Australian “Price of Piracy” campaign. While the video includes an informative description of the various types of malware, there appears to be a secondary agenda.

Strangely enough, the video itself contains no advice on how to avoid malware at all, other than to avoid pirate sites. In that sense, it looks more like an indirect anti-piracy ad.

While there’s no denying that kids might run into malware if they randomly click on pirate site ads, this problem is certainly not exclusive to these sites. Email and social media are frequently used to link to malware too, and YouTube comments can pose the same risk. The problem is everywhere.

What really caught our eye, however, is the statement that pirate sites are the most used propagation method for malware. “Did you know, the number one way we infect your device is via illegal pirate sites,” an animated piece of malware claims in the video.

Forget about email attachments, spam links, compromised servers, or even network attacks. Pirate sites are the number one spot through which malware spreads. According to the video at least. But where do they get this knowledge?

Meet the malwares

When we asked BASE for further details, the organization checked with their Australian colleagues, who pointed us to a working paper (pdf) from 2014. This paper includes the following line: “Illegal streaming websites are now the number one propagation mechanism for malicious software as 97% of them contain malware.”

Unfortunately, there’s a lot wrong with this claim.

Through another citation, the 97% figure points to this unpublished study of which only the highlights were shared. This “malware” research looked at the prevalence of malware and other unwanted software linked to pirate sites. Not just streaming sites as the other paper said, but let’s ignore that last bit.

What the study actually found is that of the 30 researched pirate sites, “90% contained malware or other ‘Potentially Unwanted Programmes’.” Note that this is not the earlier mentioned 97%, and that this broad category not only includes malware but also popup ads, which were most popular. This means that the percentage of actual malware on these sites can be anywhere from 0.1% to 90%.

Importantly, none of the malware found in this research was installed without an action performed by the user, such as clicking on a flashy download button or installing a mysterious .exe file.

Aside from clearly erroneous references, the more worrying issue is that even the original incorrect statement that “97% of all pirate sites contain malware” provides no evidence for the claim in the video that pirate sites are “the number one way” through which malware spreads.

Even if 100% of all pirate sites link to malware, that’s no proof that it’s the most used propagation method.

The malware issue has been a popular talking point for a while, but after searching for answers for days, we couldn’t find a grain of evidence. There are a lot of malware propagation methods, including email, which traditionally is a very popular choice.

Even more confusingly, the same paper that was cited as a source for the pirate site malware claim notes that 80% of all web-based malware is hosted on “innocent” but compromised websites.

As the provided evidence gave no answers, we asked the experts to chime in. Luckily, security company Malwarebytes was willing to share its assessment. As leaders in the anti-malware industry, they should know better than researchers who have their numbers and terminology mixed up.

“These days, most common infections come from malicious spam campaigns and drive-by exploit attacks,” Adam Kujawa, Director of Malware Intelligence at Malwarebytes informs us.

“Torrent sites are still frequently used by criminals to host malware disguised as something the user wants, like an application, movie, etc. However they are really only a threat to people who use torrent sites regularly and those people have likely learned how to avoid malicious torrents,” he adds.

In other words, most people who regularly visit pirate sites know how to avoid these dangers. That doesn’t mean that they are not a threat to unsuspecting kids who visit them for the first time of course.

“Now, if users who were not familiar with torrent and pirate sites started using these services, there is a high probability that they could encounter some kind of malware. However, many of these sites have user review processes to let other users know if a particular torrent or download is likely malicious.

“So, unless a user is completely new to this process and ignores all the warning signs, they could walk away from a pirate site without getting infected,” Kujawa says.

Overall, the experts at Malwarebytes see no evidence for the claim that pirate sites are the number one propagation method for malware.

“So in summary, I don’t think the claim that ‘pirate sites’ are the number one way to infect users is accurate at all,” Kujawa concludes.

While it’s always a good idea to avoid places that can have a high prevalence of malware, including pirate sites, the claims in the video are not backed up by real evidence. There are tens of thousands of non-pirate sites that pose similar or worse risks, so it’s always a good idea to have anti-malware and virus software installed.

The organizations and people involved in the British “Meet the Malwares” video might not have been aware of the doubtful claims, but it’s unfortunate that they didn’t opt for a broader campaign instead of the focused anti-piracy message.

Finally, since it’s still Safer Internet Day, we encourage kids to take a close look at the various guides on how to avoid “fake news” while engaging in critical thinking.

Be safe!

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

While Sci-Hub is praised by thousands of researchers and academics around the world, copyright holders are doing everything in their power to wipe the site from the web.

Following a $15 million defeat against Elsevier last June, the American Chemical Society (ACS) won a default judgment of $4.8 million in copyright damages a few months later.

The publisher was further granted a broad injunction, requiring various third-party services to stop providing access to the site. This includes domain registries, hosting companies and search engines.

Soon after the order was signed, several of Sci-Hub’s domain names became unreachable as domain registries complied with the court order. This resulted in a domain name whack-a-mole, but all this time Sci-Hub remained available.

Last weekend another problem appeared for Sci-Hub. This time ACS went after CDN provider Cloudflare, which informed the site that a court order requires the company to disconnect several domain names.

“Cloudflare has received the attached court order, Case 1:17-cv-OO726-LMB-JFA,” the company writes. “Cloudflare will terminate your service for the following domains sci-hub.la, sci-hub.tv, and sci-hub.tw by disabling our authoritative DNS in 24 hours.”

According to Sci-Hub’s operator, losing access to Cloudflare is not “critical,” but it may “cause a short pause in website operation.”

Sci-Hub’s Cloudflare tweet

Cloudflare’s actions are significant because the company previously protested a similar order. When the RIAA used the permanent injunction in the MP3Skull case to compel Cloudflare to disconnect the site, the CDN provider refused.

The RIAA argued that Cloudflare was operating “in active concert or participation” with the pirates. The CDN provider objected, but the court eventually ordered Cloudflare to take action, although it did not rule on the “active concert or participation” part.

In the Sci-Hub case “active concert or participation” is also a requirement for the injunction to apply. While it specifically mentions ISPs and search engines, ACS Director Glenn Ruskin previously stressed that companies won’t be targeted for simply linking users to Sci-Hub.

“The court’s affirmative ruling does not apply to search engines writ large, but only to those entities who have been in active concert or participation with Sci-Hub, such as websites that host ACS content stolen by Sci-Hub,” Ruskin told us at the time.

Cloudflare does more than linking of course, but the company doesn’t see itself as a web hosting service either. While it still may not agree with the “active concert” classification, there’s no evidence that Cloudflare objected in court this time.

As for Sci-Hub, they have to look elsewhere if they want another CDN provider. For now, however, the site remains widely available.

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

While other providers in the UK and Ireland aim to compete, those requiring the absolute fastest fibre optic broadband coupled with a comprehensive TV package will probably find themselves considering Virgin Media.

Despite sporting Richard Branson’s Virgin brand, the company has been owned by US-based Liberty Global since 2013. It previously earned the title of first quad-play media company in the United Kingdom, offering broadband, TV, fixed-line and mobile telecoms packages.

Today, however, the company has a small piracy-related embarrassment to address.

Like several of the large telecoms companies in the region, Virgin Media operates a number of bricks-and-mortar stores which are used to drum up sales for Internet, TV and phone packages while offering support to new and existing customers. They typically look like the one in the image below.

Virgin Media store (credit: Virgin)

The outside windows of Virgin stores are usually covered with advertising for the company’s products and regularly carry digital displays which present the latest deals. However, one such display spotted by a passer-by carried a little extra.

In a now-deleted post on Reddit, a user explained that when out and about he’d passed a Virgin Media store which sported a digital display advertising the company’s impressive “Full House” package. However, intruding at the top of the screen was a notification from one of the most impressive piracy apps available, Terrarium TV.

Busted: Terrarium TV notification top and center

For those out of the loop, Terrarium TV is one of the most feature-rich Android-based applications available today. For reasons that aren’t exactly clear, it hasn’t received the attention of ‘rivals’ such as Popcorn Time and Showbox but its abilities are extremely impressive.

As the image shows, the notification is letting the user know that two new movies – The Star and The Stray – have been added to Terrarium’s repertoire. In other words, they’ve just been listed in the Terrarium app for streaming directly to the user’s installation (in this case one of Virgin’s own displays) for free, without permission from copyright holders.

Of course, Virgin Media definitely won’t have authorized the installation of Terrarium TV on any of its units, so it’s most likely down to someone in the store with access to the display, perhaps a staff member but possibly a mischievous customer. Whoever it was should probably uninstall it now though, if they’re able to. Virgin will not be happy about this.

The person who took the photo didn’t respond to TorrentFreak’s request for comment on where it was taken but from the information available in the image, it seems likely that it’s in Ireland. Virgin Media ads elsewhere in the region are priced in pounds – not in euros – so a retail outlet in the country is the most likely location. The same 99 euro “Full House” deal is also advertised on Virgin’s .ie website.

Terrarium TV

While a display running a piracy application over the top of an advert trying to sell premium access to movies and TV shows is embarrassing enough, Virgin and other ISPs including Eircom, Sky Ireland, and Vodafone Ireland are currently subject to a court order which compels them to block several pirate sites in Ireland.

The sources used by Terrarium to supply illicit copies of movies are not part of that order but since ISPs in the region don’t contest blocking orders when rightsholders apply for them, it’s reasonable to presume they’re broadly in favor of blocking pirate sites.

Of course, that makes perfect sense if you’re a company trying to make money from selling premium access to content.

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

This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

Thor Ragnarok 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 weekly movie download chart.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1	(2)	Thor Ragnarok	8.1 / trailer
2	(3)	Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (HDTS)	7.3 / trailer
3	(2)	The Shape of Water (DVDScr)	8.0 / trailer
4	(…)	24 Hours to Live	5.7 / trailer
5	(5)	Blade Runner 2049	8.9 / trailer
6	(10)	Coco	8.9 / trailer
7	(…)	Braven	5.6 / trailer
8	(4)	Bright	6.5 / trailer
9	(9)	Justice League (Subbed HDRip)	7.1 / trailer
10	(…)	Suburbicon	5.5 / trailer

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