The Chinese government’s grip on power is matched by its determination to control access to information. To that end, it seeks to control what people in China can see on the Internet, thereby limiting the effect of outside influences on society.

The government tries to reach these goals by use of the so-called Great Firewall, a complex system that grants access to some foreign resources while denying access to others. However, technologically advanced citizens are able to bypass this state censorship by using circumvention techniques including Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).

While large numbers of people use such services, in January 2017 the government gave its clearest indication yet that it would begin to crack down on people offering Great Firewall-evading tools.

Operating such a service without a corresponding telecommunications business license constitutes an offense, the government said. Now we have a taste of how serious the government is on this matter.

According to an announcement from China’s Procuratorate Daily, Wu Xiangyang, a resident of the Guangxi autonomous region, has just been jailed for five-and-a-half years and fined 500,000 yuan ($75,920) for building and selling access to VPNs without an appropriate license.

It’s alleged that between 2013 and June 2017, Wu Xiangyang sold VPN server access to the public via his own website, FangouVPN / Where Dog VPN, and Taobao, a Chinese online shopping site similar to eBay and Amazon.

The member accounts provided by the man allowed customers to browse foreign websites, without being trapped behind China’s Great Firewall. He also sold custom hardware routers that came read-configured to use the VPN service, granting access to the wider Internet, contrary to the wishes of Chinese authorities.

Prosecutors say that the illegal VPN business had revenues of 792,638 yuan (US$120,377) and profits of around 500,000 yuan ($75,935). SCMP reports that the company previously boasted on Twitter at having 8,000 foreigners and 5,000 businesses using its services to browse blocked websites.

This is at least the second big sentence handed down to a Chinese citizen for providing access to VPNs. Back in September, it was revealed that Deng Jiewei, a 26-year-old from the city of Dongguan in the Guangdong province, had been jailed for nine months after offering a similar service to the public for around a year.

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The U.S. Copyright Office is considering whether or not to update the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions, which prevent the public from tinkering with DRM-protected content and devices.

These provisions are renewed every three years. To allow individuals and organizations to chime in, the Office traditionally launches a public consultation, before it makes any decisions.

This week a series of new responses were received and many of these focused on abandoned games. As is true for most software, games have a limited lifespan, so after a few years they are no longer supported by manufacturers.

To preserve these games for future generations and nostalgic gamers, the Copyright Office previously included game preservation exemptions. This means that libraries, archives and museums can use emulators and other circumvention tools to make old classics playable.

However, these exemptions are limited and do not apply to games that require a connection to an online server, which includes most recent games. When the online servers are taken down, the game simply disappears forever.

This should be prevented, according to The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment (the MADE), a nonprofit organization operating in California.

“Although the Current Exemption does not cover it, preservation of online video games is now critical,” MADE writes in its comment to the Copyright Office.

“Online games have become ubiquitous and are only growing in popularity. For example, an estimated fifty-three percent of gamers play multiplayer games at least once a week, and spend, on average, six hours a week playing with others online.”

During the previous review, similar calls for an online exemption were made but, at the time, the Register of Copyrights noted that multiplayer games could still be played on local area networks.

“Today, however, local multiplayer options are increasingly rare, and many games no longer support LAN connected multiplayer capability,” MADE counters, adding that nowadays even some single-player games require an online connection.

“More troubling still to archivists, many video games rely on server connectivity to function in single-player mode and become unplayable when servers shut down.”

MADE asks the Copyright Office to extend the current exemptions and include games with an online connection as well. This would allow libraries, archives, and museums to operate servers for these abandoned games and keep them alive.

The nonprofit museum is not alone in its call, with digital rights group Public Knowledge submitting a similar comment. They also highlight the need to preserve online games. Not just for nostalgic gamers, but also for researchers and scholars.

This issue is more relevant than ever before, as hundreds of online multiplayer games have been abandoned already.

“It is difficult to quantify the number of multiplayer servers that have been shut down in recent years. However, Electronic Arts’ ‘Online Services Shutdown’ list is one illustrative example,” Public Knowledge writes.

“The list — which is littered with popular franchises such as FIFA World Cup, Nascar, and The Sims — currently stands at 319 games and servers discontinued since 2013, or just over one game per week since 2012.”

Finally, several ‘regular’ gaming fans have also made their feelings known. While their arguments are usually not as elaborate, the personal pleasure people still get out of older games can’t be overstated.

“I have been playing video games since the Atari 2600, for 35 years. Nowadays, game ‘museums’ — getting the opportunity to replay games from my youth, and share them with my child — are a source of joy for me,” one individual commenter wrote.

“I would love the opportunity to explore some of the early online / MMO games that I spent so much time on in the past!”

Game on?

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^{Header image via MMOs.com}

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Back in 2016, so-called copyright-trolling landed in Sweden for the first time via an organization calling itself Spridningskollen (Distribution Check). Within months, however, it was all over, with the operation heading for the hills after much negative publicity.

February this year, another wave of trolling hit the country, with Danish law firm Njord Law targeting the subscribers of several ISPs, including Telia, Tele2 and Bredbandsbolaget. Thousands of IP addresses had been harvested by its media company partners, potentially linking to thousands of subscribers.

“We have sent out a few thousand letters, but we have been given the right to obtain information behind many more IP addresses that we are waiting to receive from the telecom operators. So there are more,” lawyer Jeppe Brogaard Clausen said in October.

But while Internet users in Sweden wait for news of how this campaign is progressing, multiple new threats are appearing on the horizon. Swedish publication Breakit reports that several additional law firms in Sweden are also getting in on the action with one, Innerstans Advokatbyrå, already sending out demands to alleged file-sharers.

“By downloading and uploading the movie without permission from the copyright holder, you have committed a copyright infringement,” its letter warns.

“However, the rightsholder wishes to propose a conciliation solution consisting of paying a flat rate of 7,000 kronor [$831] in one payment for all of the copyright infringements in question.”

The demand for 7,000 kronor is significantly more than 4,500 kronor ($535) demanded by Njord Law but Innerstans Advokatbyrå warns that this amount will only be the beginning, should an alleged pirate fail to pay up and the case goes to court.

“If this happens, the amount will not be limited to 7,000 kronor but will compensate for the damage suffered and will include compensation for investigative costs, application fees and attorney fees,” the company warns.

Breakit spoke with Alex Block at Innerstans Advokatbyrå who wouldn’t reveal how many letters had been sent out. However, he did indicate that while damages amounts will be decided by the court, a license for a shared film can cost 80,000 kronor ($12,800).

“This will last for a long time, and to a large extent,” he said.

Of course, we’ve reported on plenty of these campaigns before and their representatives all state that people will be taken to court if they don’t pay. This one is no different, with Block assuring the public that if they don’t pay, court will follow. The credibility of the campaign is at stake, he notes.

“It’s our intention [to go to court], even if we prefer to avoid it. We must make reality of our requirements, otherwise it will not work,” he says.

Breakit says it has seen a copy of one letter from the lawfirm, which reveals a collaboration between US film company Mile High Distribution Inc. and Mircom International Content Management & Consulting Ltd.

Mircom is extremely well known in trolling circles having conducted campaigns in several areas of the EU. German outfit Media Protector is also involved, having tracked the IP addresses of the alleged pirates. This company also has years of experience working with copyright trolls.

With several other law firms apparently getting in on the action, Swedish authorities need to ensure that the country doesn’t become another Germany where trolls have run rampant for a number of years, causing misery for thousands.

While that help may not necessarily be forthcoming, it’s perhaps a little surprising that given Sweden’s proud and recent history of piracy activism, there appear to be very few signs of a visible and organized pushback from the masses. That will certainly please the trolls, who tend to thrive when unchallenged.

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For a long time UHD Blu-Ray discs have been the holy grail for movie rippers.

Protected by the ‘unbreakable’ AACS 2.0 encryption, pirates were left with regular HD releases. While that’s fine for most people, it didn’t sit well with the real videophiles.

This year there have been some major developments on this front. First, full copies of UHD discs started to leak online, later followed by dozens of AACS 2.0 keys. Technically speaking AACS 2.0 is not confirmed to be defeated yet, but many discs can now be ripped.

This week a popular name jumped onto the UHD Blu-Ray bandwagon. In its latest beta release, AnyDVD now supports the format, relying on the leaked keys.

“New (UHD Blu-ray): Fetch AACS keys from external file for use with ‘UHD-friendly’ drives,” the release notes read.

The involvement of AnyDVD is significant because it previously came under legal pressure from decryption licensing outfit AACS LA. This caused former parent company Slysoft to shut down last year, but the software later reappeared under new management.

Based on reports from several AnyDVD users, the UHD ripping works well for most people. Some even claim that it’s faster than the free alternative, MakeMKV.

The question is, however, how long the ripping party will last. TorrentFreak has learned that not all supported Blu-Ray disc drives will remain “UHD-friendly.”

According to one source’s information, which we were unable to independently verify, device manufacturers have recently been instructed to patch the holes through firmware updates.

This indeed appears to be what’s happening. According to several user reports, LG’s WH16NS40 is no longer able to read and rip UHD Blu-Rays after the most recent firmware change.

Ironically, LG advertises it as “Improved BD UHD disc compatibility.”

So, while ripping tools such as AnyDVD are joining in to support UHD ripping, AACS LA and disc drive manufacturers appear to be patching security holes. But whatever they do, rippers are unlikely to stop their efforts until they’ve reached the holy grail.

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Most people who obtain and share large quantities of material online understand that comes with risk, possibly in the form of an ISP-forwarded warning, a letter demanding cash, or even a visit from the police.

While the latter only happens in the rarest of circumstances, warnings are relatively commonplace, especially in the United States where companies like Rightscorp pump them out in their thousands. Letters demanding cash payment, sent by so-called copyright trolls, are less prevalent but these days most people understand the concept of a piracy ‘fine’.

With this level of understanding in the mainstream there are opportunities for scammers, who have periodically tried to extract payments from Internet users who have done nothing wrong. This is currently the case in Germany, where a consumer group is warning of a wave of piracy ‘fines’ being sent out to completely innocent victims.

The emails, which claim to be sent on behalf of 20th Century Fox, allege the recipient has infringed copyright on streaming portal Kinox.to. For this apparent transgression, they demand a payment of more than 375 euros but the whole thing is an elaborate scam.

The 20th Century Fox ‘piracy’ scam

Unlike some fairly primitive previous efforts, however, these emails are actually quite clever.

Citing a genuine ruling from the European Court of Justice which found that streaming content is illegal inside the EU, the cash demand offers up personal information of the user, such as IP addresses, browser, and operating system.

However, instead of obtaining these via an external piracy monitoring system and subsequent court order (as happens with BitTorrent cases), the data is pulled from the user’s machine when a third-party link is clicked.

As highlighted by Tarnkappe, who first noticed the warning, there are other elements to the cash demands that point to an elaborate scam.

Perhaps the biggest tell of all is the complete absence of precise details of the alleged infringement, such as the title of the content supposedly obtained along with a time and date. These are common features of all genuine settlement demands so any that fail to mention content should be treated with caution.

“Do not pay. It is rip off. Report to the police,” the local consumer group warns.

Interestingly, warning recipients are advised by the scammers to pay their ‘fine’ directly to a bank account in the United Kingdom. Hopefully it will have been shut down by now but it’s worth mentioning that people should avoid direct bank transfers with anyone they don’t trust.

If any payment must be made, credit cards are a much safer option but in the case of wannabe trolls, they’re best ignored until they appear with proper proof backed up by credible legal documentation. Even then, people should consider putting up a fight, if they’re being unfairly treated.

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