In 2016, mass ‘copyright-trolling’ hit Sweden for the first time. An organization calling itself Spridningskollen (Distribution Check) claimed its new initiative would save the entertainment industries and educate the masses.

Following a huge backlash, however, the operation shut up shop and retreated, tail between its legs. But for those who expected the trolls to disappear altogether, bad news was just around the corner.

In February 2017, Danish law firm Njord Law was found to be at the helm of a new troll operation targeting the subscribers of several ISPs, including Telia, Tele2 and Bredbandsbolaget. Some 42-pages of court documents revealed that thousands of IP addresses had been harvested, potentially linking to thousands of subscribers.

After receiving permission from the courts to obtain the personal details of alleged pirates, things went a little quiet. However, according to local news outlet IDG, the floodgates have now been opened, with several thousand ISP subscribers receiving cash demands from Njord Law in recent weeks.

“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 told the publication.

Indeed, an indication of the scale of the operation can be found in the order obtained to target customers of ISP Telia. In that batch alone the court granted permission for Njord Law to obtain the identities behind 25,000 IP addresses.

Earlier this year, Clausen said that after identifying the subscribers he wanted to “enter into non-aggressive dialogue” with them. As we predicted, this apparently friendly introduction would simply lead to inevitable demands for cash.

“Have you, or other people with access to the aforementioned IP address, such as children living at home, viewed or tried to watch [a pirate movie] at the specified time?” Njord Law now writes in its letters to alleged pirates.

“If so, the case can be terminated by paying 4,500 SEK [$550].”

According to IDG, lots of movies are involved, both from local and international distributors. Earlier this year, CELL, IT, London Has Fallen, Mechanic: Resurrection, Criminal and September of Shiraz were named as possible titles.

The inclusion of these titles come as no surprise since several have turned up in similar trolling cases all over Europe and the United States. In common with schemes elsewhere, BitTorrent tracking was carried out by MaverickEye, a German-based company that is part of the notorious Guardaley trolling operation.

Like most ‘trolling’ cases, figures on how many people are paying up in Sweden are hard to come by. Clausen won’t say how many have parted with cash, but the lawyer says that 60% of the letters have elicited some kind of response. In previous similar projects in the UK, around a fifth of targets paid some sort of settlement, with no contested cases reaching the courts.

Njord Law insists, however, that those who don’t pay in Sweden may have to face the legal system.

“Yes, we will [go to court],” says Clausen. “We wish to resolve matters as much as possible through education and dialogue without the assistance of the court though. It is very expensive both for the rights holders and for plaintiffs if we go to court.”

While it’s impossible to predict how these cases will go, the usual tactic is to attack the low-hanging fruit first. People who admit some form of guilt can expect the most pressure while those who deny the allegations flat out (subscribers aren’t necessarily infringers) are likely to be placed in a file to be dealt with last, if at all.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

The Czech Pirates have made quite a name for themselves in recent years.

The political party previously took on a local anti-piracy outfit by launching their own movie download sites, making the point that linking is not a crime.

The bold move resulted in a criminal investigation, but the case was eventually dropped after it was deemed that the Pirates acted in accordance with EU law.

In the political arena, the Czech Pirate Party booked several successes as well. In Parliamentary elections, however, the party never managed to beat the required threshold. Until this weekend.

With 10.79% of the total vote, the Pirates won 22 seats in the national parliament. Not just that, they also became the third largest political party in the country, where more than 30 parties participated in the elections.

The Czech Republic becomes the fourth country where a Pirate Party is represented in the national parliament, following Sweden, Germany, and Iceland, which is quite an achievement.

“It is the best result of any Pirate Party in history and gives us a great mandate to transform the dynamics of Czech politics. At the same time, we understand this as a huge responsibility towards the voters and the Pirate movement as a whole,” Tomáš Vymazal, one of the new Members of Parliament, tells TorrentFreak.

The Pirates (photo via)

While there were some celebrations after the election result came in, the Czech Pirate Party is moving full steam ahead. The twenty-two newly elected members have already held their first meeting, discussing how to get the most out of their negotiations with other parties.

“The negotiation team has been established and the club’s chairman was elected. We’ll now need to set up our offices, hire assistants and distribute specific responsibilities among the club,” Vymazal says.

“One of the first issues we will open up a discussion about how parliament will be fixing an historic anti-corruption bill.”

The bill in question makes sure that every contract the state or a state-owned business enters into is put on the record. However, the previous parliament introduced several exceptions and as a result, many of the money flows remain hidden from the public.

Like other Pirate parties, the Czech branch is by no means a single issue outfit. The party has a broad vision which it distilled to a twenty point program. In addition to fighting corruption, this includes tax reform and increasing teachers’ salaries, for example.

More classical pirate themes are also on the agenda of course. The Pirate Party wants to overhaul the country’s copyright legislation, stop internet censorship, and put an end to cell phone tracking. In addition, the use of medical marijuana should be allowed.

With the backing of hundreds of thousands of Czechs, these and other issues will certainly be on the political agenda during the years to come. It’s now up to the Pirates to make them a reality.

“We must do a very good job to successfully establish the Pirate Party in Czech politics and deliver on the promises we made to the voters,” Vymazal says.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

This week we have three newcomers in our chart.

War for the Planet of the Apes is the most downloaded movie again.

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	(1)	War for the Planet of the Apes	7.8 / trailer
2	(6)	Annabelle Creation (Subbed HDRip)	6.7 / trailer
3	(3)	Spider-Man: Homecoming	7.8 / trailer
4	(2)	The Dark Tower	5.9 / trailer
5	(…)	Atomic Blonde (Subbed HDRip)	7.0 / trailer
6	(4)	American Made (Subbed HDrip)	7.3 / trailer
7	(…)	Cars 3	7.0 / trailer
8	(5)	Baby Driver	8.0 / trailer
9	(…)	Kingsman: The Golden Circle (HDTS)	7.2 / trailer
10	(7)	Wonder Woman	8.2 / trailer

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

At the beginning of October, several entertainment industry groups shared their piracy concerns with the US Government’s Trade Representative (USTR).

Aside from pointing towards traditional websites, pirate streaming boxes were also brought up, by the MPAA among others.

“An emerging global threat is streaming piracy which is enabled by piracy devices preloaded with software to illicitly stream movies and television programming and a burgeoning ecosystem of infringing add-ons,” the MPAA noted.

This week the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which includes members such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Netflix, notes that the USTR should be careful not to blame an open source media player such as Kodi, for the infringing actions of others.

CCIA wrote a rebuttal clarifying that Kodi and similar open source players are not the problem here.

“Another example of commenters raising concerns about generalized technology is the MPAA’s characterization of customizable, open-source set-top boxes utilizing the Kodi multimedia player application along with websites that allegedly ‘enable one-click installation of modified software onto set-top boxes or other internet-connected devices’,” CCIA writes.

While the MPAA itself also clearly mentioned that “Kodi is not itself unlawful,” CCIA stresses that any enforcement actions should be aimed at those who are breaking the law. The real targets include vendors who sell streaming boxes pre-loaded with infringing addons.

“These enforcement activities should focus on the infringers themselves, however, not a general purpose technology, such as an operating system for set-top boxes, which may be used in both lawful and unlawful ways.

“Open-source software designed for operating a home electronics device is unquestionably legitimate, and capable of substantial non-infringing uses,” CCIA adds in its cautionary letter the USTR.

While the MPAA’s submission was not trying to characterize Kodi itself as illegal, it did call out TVAddons.ag as a “piracy add-on repository.” The new incarnation of TVAddons wasn’t happy with this label and previously scolded the movie industry group for its comments, pointing out that it only received a handful of DMCA takedown notices in recent years.

“…in the entire history of TV ADDONS, XBMC HUB and OffshoreGit, we only received a total of about five DMCA notices in all; two of which were completely bogus. None of which came from a MPAA affiliate.”

While it’s obvious to most that Kodi isn’t the problem, as CCIA is highlighting, to many people it’s still unclear where the line between infringing and non-infringing is drawn. Lawsuits, including those against TVAddons and TickBox, are expected to bring more clarity.

—

CCIA’s full submission is available here (pdf).

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

While there are plenty of people who just want content for free, digging through the last 35 years of piracy reveals an interesting trend. One way or another, people have always secretly admired anti-piracy systems, since they simultaneously relish the prospect of one day subverting their barriers.

In the very early 80s, when the first 8-bit home computers became more readily available, finding ways to pirate games was almost as much fun as playing them. Children, with limited pocket money, would pool their resources and buy a single copy of a cassette-based game, hoping to clone it at home with a twin-deck recorder, to share among their fellow investors.

With significant trial and error (and only pre-Internet schoolyard advice and folklore available) copying eventually became easy. Then the ‘evil’ games companies worked out what was going on and decided to do something about it.

Early protection systems, such as ‘Hyper Loaders‘, threw a wrench in the works for a while but along came software like Lerm (with full page ads in the media) to level the playing field. Anything you can do we can do better, those kids rejoiced.

Unsurprisingly, copiers like Lerm also fell victim to pirates, with all self-respecting red beards owning a copy. But then the next waves of anti-piracy systems would come along, ensuring that working out how to pirate games became a time-consuming hobby in itself. But most pirates were kids – what else did they have to do?

With a young and inexperienced mindset, however, it was sometimes easy to fear that like Denuvo a year or two ago, some things might never be copied. Take the 1983 release of International Soccer for the Commodore 64 home computer, for example. That originally came on a cartridge – who could ever copy one of those?

Of course, someone did, dumping it onto cassette tape complete with a modification that had some players sitting in wheelchairs, others on crutches, instead of running around. By today’s standards that’s both technically trivial and rather insensitive, but at the time it represented a pirate double-whammy.

A game that couldn’t be pirated getting pirated onto another format, plus a ridiculous addition that no game company would ever allow to market? To teenage pirates, that was a supremely delicious not to mention rebellious treat.

As the months and years rolled on, new consoles – such as Commodore’s Amiga – brought 3.5″ floppy disc storage and new copy protection mechanisms to the masses. And, as expected, fresh solutions to thwart them came to market. Tools such as X-Copy Pro went down in history and were universally hailed by pirates. Who immediately pirated them, of course.

Today the situation is somewhat different but somehow just the same. Copy protection mechanisms, such as the now-infamous Denuvo, are so complex that no user-operated tool is available to copy the games protected by it. Yet people, driven by a passion for subverting the system and solving technological puzzles, are dedicating thousands of hours to take them apart.

Just recently, Denuvo was well and truly dismantled. Games are now routinely getting cracked in a day, sometimes just hours, and the excitement in the air is palpable. In many ways, this is the same kind of enthusiasm expressed by the relatively naive kid pirates of the 80s. They too were frustrated by copy protection, they too screamed with glee when it fell from grace.

While gaming has always been fun, the sense of achievement – of subverting the system – has always come a close second to actually playing games for those with an enthusiastic pirate streak. Imagine a world where every game could be easily copied by just about anyone. Now compare that to a war of attrition against the dark forces behind 80s Hyper Loaders and the evil Denuvo of today.

In the end, there’s no doubt. Most dedicated pirates, provided they eventually taste victory, will take the warfare option any day, fighting to the end, fighting for victory.

Let’s be honest. Pirates absolutely need a nemesis like Denuvo. Because – quite simply – it’s only half the fun without one.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.