Piracy remains one of the key threats for most Hollywood movie studios.

Most companies have entire departments dedicated to spotting infringing content, understanding the changing landscape, and figuring out how to respond.

20th Century Fox, for example, has its own Content Protection group, headed by Ron Wheeler. The group keeps an eye on emerging piracy threats and is currently looking for fresh blood.

The company has listed two new internships. The first is for a Graduate JD Law Student, who will be tasked with analyzing fair use cases and finding new targets for lawsuits, among other things.

“Interns will participate in the monitoring of and enforcement against such piracy, including conducting detailed copyright infringement and fair use analyses; identifying and researching litigation targets, and searching the internet for infringing copies of Fox content.”

Fox notes that basic knowledge of the principles of Copyright Law is a plus, but apparently not required. Students who take this internship will learn how film and television piracy affects the media industry and consumers, preparing them for future work in this field.

“This is a great opportunity for students interested in pursuing practice in the fields of Intellectual Property, Entertainment, or Media Law,” the job application explains.

A second anti-piracy internship that was posted recently is a search and analytics position. This includes organizing online copyright infringement intelligence and compiling this in analytical piracy reports for Fox executives.

Undergraduate – Research & Analytics

The research job posting shows that Fox keeps an eye on a wide range of piracy avenues including search engines, forums, eBay and pirate sites.

“Anti-Piracy Internet Investigations and Analysis including, but not limited to, internet research, forum site investigation, eBay searches, video forensics analysis review, database entry, general internet searches for Fox video content, review and summarize pirate websites, piracy trend analysis, and more.”

Those who complete the internship will have a thorough understanding of how widespread piracy issues are. It will provide insight into how this affects the movie industry and consumers alike, Fox explains.

While the average torrenter and streaming pirate might not be very eager to work for ‘the other side,’ these internships are ideal positions for students who have aspirations of working in the anti-piracy field. If any TorrentFreak readers plan to apply and get the job, we’ll be eager to hear what you’ve learned in a few months.

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

With around 170,000 users, HDClub was known for high-quality releases that often leaked to public sites like The Pirate Bay.

Describing itself as “The HighDefinition BitTorrent Community”, HDClub specialized in HD productions including Blu-ray and 3D content, covering movies, TV shows, music videos, and animation.

The site was the largest of its kind in Russia and had been around for a long time. It celebrated its tenth anniversary a few months ago and during this time it amassed over 170,000 members, which is quite significant for a private community.

However, last month the fun was over. As a total surprise to most of the members, HDTorrents’ operators decided to shut down the site. A Russian language announcement now present on its main page explains the reasons for the site’s demise.

“Recently, we received several dozens of complaints from rightsholders weekly, and our community is subjected to attacks and espionage. In parallel, there is a tightening of Internet legislation in Russia, Ukraine and EU countries,” the announcement explained.

This grim outlook was, however, paired with a glimmer of hope. “There are talks on preserving the heritage of the club,” the site teased.

This was not a false promise, it turned out this week. The former foundation of HDClub now forms the basis of a new tracker. EliteHD takes over where HDClub left off with a working copy of the code, torrents and user database.

“Welcome to the closed tracker elitehd.org. We will try to increase the best HD collection and ensure your safety and confidentiality,” EliteHD’s operators posted in a Russian announcement earlier this week.

“The new site received a full copy of the database and the code of the closed HDClub. The user base has been thoroughly cleaned, there will be no free registration,” it adds.

EliteHD’s torrents

“Thoroughly cleaned” means that around 80,000 accounts were removed and the new maximum is currently set at 100,000 registered users. The torrent database is intact though. There are over 26,000 HD torrents in the database totaling more than 500 terabytes of data.

The site’s operators note that members can continue to seed old torrents as well. All they have to do is change the torrent’s announce URL in their client, and uploads should pick up again.

In recent weeks there have been other private trackers which tried to get former HDClub users on board, but it will be hard to compete with a site that has the real database and code.

EliteHD specifically warns people not to fall for fakes and ‘unofficial’ incarnations of its predecessor. “We strongly recommend that you beware of numerous fake projects and “successors,” the site operators stress.

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

Last month Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince decided to terminate the account of controversial neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer.

“I woke up this morning in a bad mood and decided to kick them off the Internet,” he announced.

While the decision is understandable from an emotional point of view, it’s quite a statement to make as the CEO of one of the largest Internet infrastructure companies. Not least because it goes directly against what many saw as Cloudflare’s core values.

For years on end, Cloudflare has been asked to remove terrorist propaganda, pirate sites, and other controversial content. Each time, Cloudflare replied that it doesn’t take action without a court order. No exceptions.

In addition, Cloudflare repeatedly stressed that it was impossible for them to remove a website from the Internet, at least not permanently. It would only require a simple DNS reconfiguration to get it back up and running.

While the Daily Stormer case has nothing to do with piracy or copyright infringement, it’s now being brought up as important evidence in an ongoing piracy liability case. Adult entertainment publisher ALS Scan views Prince as a “key witness” in the case and wants to depose Cloudflare’s CEO to find out more about his decision.

“Mr. Prince’s statement to the public that Cloudflare kicked neo-Nazis off the internet stand in sharp contrast to Cloudflare’s testimony in this case, where it claims it is powerless to remove content from the Internet,” ALS Scan writes.

The above is part of a recent submission where both parties argue over whether Prince can be deposed or not. Cloudflare wants to prevent this from happening and claims it’s unnecessary, but the adult publisher disagrees.

“By his own admissions, Mr. Prince’s decision to terminate certain users’ accounts was ‘arbitrary,’ the result of him waking up ‘in a bad mood,’ and a decision he made unilaterally as ‘CEO of a major Internet infrastructure corporation’.

“Mr. Prince has made it clear that he is the one who determines the circumstances under which Cloudflare will terminate a user’s account,” ALS Scan adds.

For its part, Cloudflare says that the CEO’s deposition is not needed. This is backed up by a declaration where Prince emphasizes that he has no unique knowledge on the company’s DMCA and repeat infringer policies, issues that directly relate to the case at hand.

“I have no unique personal knowledge regarding Cloudflare’s DMCA policy and procedure, including its repeat infringer policies, or Cloudflare’s published Terms of Service,” Prince informs the court

Prince’s declaration

The adult publisher, however, harps on the fact that the CEO arbitrarily decided to remove one site from the service, while requiring court orders in other instances. They quote from a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article he wrote and highlight the ‘kick off the internet’ claim, which contradicts earlier statements.

Cloudflare’s lawyers contend that the WSJ article in question was meant to kick off a conversation and shouldn’t be taken literally.

“The WSJ Article was intended as an intellectual exercise to start a conversation regarding censorship and free speech on the internet. The WSJ Article had nothing to do with copyright infringement issues or Cloudflare’s DMCA policy and procedure.

“When Mr. Prince stated in the WSJ Article that ‘[he] helped kick a group of neo-Nazis off the internet last week,’ his comments were intended to illustrate a point – not to be taken literally,” Cloudflare’s legal team adds.

The deposition of Trey Guinn, a technical employee at Cloudflare, confirms that the company doesn’t have the power to cut a site off the Internet. It further suggests that the entire removal of Daily Stormer was in essence a provocation to start a conversation around freedom of speech.

From Guinn’s deposition

Still, since the lawsuit in question revolves around terminating customers, ALS Scan wants to depose Price to find out exactly when clients are terminated, and why he decided to go beyond Couldflare’s usual policy.

“No other employee can testify to Mr. Prince’s decision-making process when it comes to terminating a user’s access. No other employee can offer an explanation as to why The Daily Stormer’s account was terminated while repeat infringers’ accounts are allowed to remain.

“In a case where Mr. Prince’s personal judgment appears to govern even over Cloudflare’s own policies and procedures, Cloudflare cannot meet its heavy burden of demonstrating why he should not be deposed,” ALS Scan’s lawyers add.

To be continued.

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

Needing little introduction, the anti-piracy system sold by Denuvo Software Solutions of Austria is probably the most well-known product of its type of the planet.

For years, Denuvo was considered pretty much impenetrable, with its presence a virtual stamp of assurance that a game being protected by it would not fall victim to piracy, potentially for years. In recent times, however, things have begun to crumble.

Strangely, it started in early 2016 with bad news. Chinese cracking group 3DM declared that Denuvo was probably uncrackable and no protected games would appear online during the next two years.

By June, however, hope appeared on the horizon, with hints that progress was being made. By August 2016, all doubts were removed when a group called CONSPIR4CY (a reported collaboration between CPY and CODEX) released Rise of the Tomb Raider.

After that, Denuvo-protected titles began dropping like flies, with some getting cracked weeks after their launch. Then things got serious.

Early this year, Resident Evil 7 fell in less than a week. In the summer, RiME fell in a few days, four days exactly for Tekken 7.

Now, however, Denuvo has suffered its biggest failure yet, with strategy game Total War: Warhammer 2 falling to pirates in less than a day, arguably just a few hours. It was cracked by STEAMPUNKS, a group that’s been dumping cracked games on the Internet at quite a rate for the past few months.

TOTAL.WAR.WARHAMMER.2-STEAMPUNKS

“Take this advice, DO NOT CODE a new installer when you have very hot Babes dancing in their bikini just in front of you. Never again,” the group said in a statement. “This time we locked ourselves inside and produced a new installer.”

The fall of this game in such a short space of time will be of major concern to Denuvo Software Solutions. After Resident Evil 7 was cracked in days earlier this year, Denuvo Marketing Director Thomas Goebl told Eurogamer that some protection was better than nothing.

“Given the fact that every unprotected title is cracked on the day of release — as well as every update of games — our solution made a difference for this title,” he said.

With yesterday’s 0-day crack of Total War: Warhammer 2, it can be argued that Denuvo made absolutely no difference whatsoever to the availability of the title. It didn’t even protect the initial launch window.

Goebl’s additional comment in the summer was that “so far only one piracy group has been able to bypass [Denuvo].” Now, just a handful of months later, there are several groups with the ability. That’s not a good look for the company.

Back in 2016, Denuvo co-founder Robert Hernandez told Kotaku that the company does not give refunds. It would be interesting to know if anything has changed there too.

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

In recent years, many copyright holders have grown frustrated with pirates copies of their content (re)appearing on hundreds of online platforms.

This problem is not restricted to pirate sites, but also affects other services where users can freely upload content, including Dropbox, Google, YouTube, and Facebook.

In an attempt to streamline these takedown procedures the European Commission published a detailed set of guidelines today. Their communication titled “Tackling Illegal Content Online” includes a comprehensive overview of how illegal content, including piracy, should be dealt with.

The recommendation, of which a non-final copy leaked earlier this month, is non-binding. However, future legislative measures are not ruled out if no significant progress is made.

One of the motivations to release the guidelines is to define clearly what a good takedown policy would look like. A harmonized and coherent takedown approach is currently missing in the EU, the Commission notes.

“A more aligned approach would make the fight against illegal content more effective. It would also benefit the development of the Digital Single Market and reduce the cost of compliance with a multitude of rules for online platforms, including for new entrants,” the recommendation reads.

One of the suggestions that stand out is “proactive” filtering. The Commission recommends that online services should implement measures that can automatically detect and remove suspected illegal content.

“Online platforms should do their utmost to proactively detect, identify and remove illegal content online. The Commission strongly encourages online platforms to use voluntary, proactive measures aimed at the detection and removal of illegal content and to step up cooperation and investment in, and use of, automatic detection technologies.”

This is similar to the much-discussed upload filters and raises the question whether such practice is in line with existing EU law. In the Sabam v Netlog case, the European Court of Justice previously ruled that hosting sites can’t be forced to filter copyrighted content, as this would violate the privacy of users and hinder freedom of information.

Importantly, the Commission emphasizes that when online services explicitly search for pirated material, they won’t lose the benefit of the liability exemption provided for in Article 14 of the E-Commerce Directive. In other words, copyright holders can’t hold these services accountable for content that slips through the net.

The recommendation further includes some specific suggestions to make sure that content, once removed, does not reappear. This is the notice-and-stay-down approach copyright holders are lobbying for, which can be addressed by content recognition tools including hash filtering.

“The Commission strongly encourages the further use and development of automatic technologies to prevent the re-appearance of illegal content online,” the document reads, adding that errors should not be overlooked.

“Where automatic tools are used to prevent re-appearance of illegal content a reversibility safeguard should be available for erroneous decisions, and the use and performance of this technology should be made transparent in the platforms’ terms of service.”

Hash-based and other automatic filters are not new of course. Services such as Google Drive and Dropbox already have these in place and YouTube’s Content-ID system also falls into this category.

Another measure to prevent re-uploading of content is to ban frequent offenders. The Commission notes that services should take appropriate measures against such users, which could include the suspension or termination of accounts.

Most of the suggestions come with a recommendation to have sufficient safeguards in place to repair or prevent errors. This includes a counter-notice process as well as regularly published transparency reports. In some cases where context is relevant, it is important to have a human reviewer in the loop.

Finally, the Commission encourages cooperation between online services and so-called “trusted flaggers.” The latter are known representatives of copyright holders who are trusted. As such, their takedown notices can be prioritized.

“Notices from trusted flaggers should be able to be fast-tracked by the platform. This cooperation should provide for mutual information exchange so as to evaluate and improve the removal process over time.”

The proposals go above and beyond current legal requirements. For many larger online services, it might not be too hard to comply with most of the above. But, for smaller services, it could be quite a burden.

European Digital Rights (EDRi) has highlighted some good and bad elements but remains critical.

“The document puts virtually all its focus on internet companies monitoring online communications, in order to remove content that they decide might be illegal. It presents few safeguards for free speech, and little concern for dealing with content that is actually criminal,” EDRi writes.

Google has also been critical of the notice-and-stay-down principle in the past. Copyright counsel Cédric Manara previously outlined several problems, concluding that the system “just won’t work.“

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