It appears that yet another large media outlet has fallen victim to a high-profile hack.

After Sony and, indirectly, Netflix, hackers have now compromised the network of the American cable and television network HBO.

Sunday evening a mysterious email was sent to reporters, announcing the prominent breach.

“Hi to all mankind. The greatest leak of cyber space era is happening. What’s its name? Oh I forget to tell. Its HBO and Game of Thrones……!!!!!!” the email read.

While several reports were published, the first by Entertainment Weekly, the actual leaked files were not widely available on the usual pirate sites. However, a few hours ago a website appeared online that claims to hold the ‘treasure trove.’

Winter-leak.com, a reference to the famous Game of Thrones “Winter is Coming” phrase, does indeed list several files that appear to come from HBO.

“In a complicate operation, we successfully penetrated in to the HBO Internal Network, Emails, technical platforms, and database and got precious and confidential stuff that blaze your eyes,” the hacker, or hackers write on their website.

The hackers claim to have 1.5 terabytes of data from the company. So far, previously unreleased episodes of Ballers, Barry, Insecure and Room 104 are featured on the site. However, there are also three separate archives listed, with over a terabyte of data.

Most prominent, perhaps, is a preliminary outline of the fourth episode of the current Game of Thrones season, which will air this coming Sunday.

At TorrentFreak, we always strive to find proof for reported leaks, and from what we’ve seen and gathered, it does indeed appear to be the real deal. The Game of Thrones information, for example, lists a preliminary outline of the fourth episode of season 7, including many spoilers.

As can be seen below, the outline itself is watermarked by the hackers, with the tagline “HBO is falling.”

Perhaps even more unusual, the leak also includes a video, featuring Game of Thrones images, the leaders, and a textual outline of the episode. As with the outline, the videos are available for the third and fourth episode of season 7.

HBO’s chairman and CEO, Richard Plepler, has confirmed that the company’s infrastructure was breached, but didn’t mention what information was accessed. He sent an email to employees a few hours ago, informing them about the “cyber incident.”

“As most of you have probably heard by now, there has been a cyber incident directed at the company which has resulted in some stolen proprietary information, including some of our programming,” he wrote.

“Any intrusion of this nature is obviously disruptive, unsettling, and disturbing for all of us. I can assure you that senior leadership and our extraordinary technology team, along with outside experts, are working round the clock to protect our collective interests.”

The full contents of the leaks have yet to be analyzed. It’s doubtful that any Game of Thrones episodes will leak, but there’s likely to be a lot of confidential information in the copied data, which HBO would otherwise prefer to keep to itself.

HBO has already mentioned that it’s doing everything in its power to prevent the leaks from spreading any further. In addition, they are also working with law enforcement to track down the people responsible.

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

As the sharing of copyrighted material on the Internet continues, so do the waves of lawsuits which claim compensation for alleged damage caused.

Run by so-called ‘copyright trolls’, these legal efforts are often painted as the only way for rightsholders to send a tough message to deter infringement. In reality, however, these schemes are often the basis for a separate revenue stream, one in which file-sharers are forced to pay large cash sums to make supposed jury trials disappear.

Courts around the United States are becoming familiar with these ‘settlement factories’ and sometimes choose to make life more difficult for the trolls. With this potential for friction, the language deployed in lawsuits is often amped up to paint copyright holders as fighting for their very existence. Meanwhile, alleged infringers are described as hardened criminals intent on wreaking havoc on the entertainment industries.

While this polarization is nothing new, a court filing spotted by the troll-fighters over at Fight Copyright Trolls sees the demonization of file-sharers amped up to eleven – and then some.

The case, which is being heard in a district court in Nevada, features LHF Productions, the outfit behind action movie London Has Fallen. It targets five people who allegedly shared the work using BitTorrent and failed to respond to the company’s requests to settle.

“[N]one of the Defendants referenced herein have made any effort to answer or otherwise respond to the Plaintiff’s allegations. In light of the Defendants’ apparent failure to take any action with respect to the present lawsuit, the Plaintiff is left with no choice but to seek a default judgment,” the motion reads.

In the absence of any defense, LHF Productions asks the court to grant default judgments of $15,000 per defendant, which amounts to $75,000 overall, a decent sum for what amounts to five downloads. LHF Productions notes that it could’ve demanded $150,000 from each individual but feels that a more modest sum would be sufficient to “deter future infringement.”

However, when reading the description of the defendants provided by LHF, one could be forgiven for thinking that they’re actually heinous criminals hell-bent on worldwide destruction.

“The Defendants are participants in a global piracy ring composed of one hundred fifty million members – a ring that threatens to tear down fundamental structures of intellectual property,” the lawsuit reads.

While there are indeed 150 million users of BitTorrent, this characterization that they’re all involved in a single “piracy ring” is both misleading and inaccurate.

BitTorrent swarms are separate entities, so the correct way of describing the defendants would be limited to their action for the movie London Has Fallen. Instead, they’re painted as being involved in a global conspiracy with more members than the populations of the United Kingdom, Canada, and Spain combined.

It seems that the introduction of more drama into these infringement lawsuits is becoming necessary as more courts become wise to the activities of trolls, not least organizations being branded criminal themselves, such as the now defunct Prenda Law.

Perhaps with this in mind, LHF Productions tries to convince the court that far from being small-time file-sharers, people downloading their movie online are actually part of something extremely big, a crime wave so huge that nothing like it has ever been witnessed.

“While the actions of each individual participant may seem innocuous, their collective action amounts to one of the largest criminal enterprises ever seen on earth,” LHF says of the defendants.

“[I]f this pervasive culture of piracy is allowed to continue undeterred, it threatens to undo centuries of intellectual property law and unravel a core pillar of our economy. After all, the right to intellectual property was something so fundamental, so essential, to our nation’s founding, that our founding father’s found it necessary to include in the first article of the Constitution.”

If the apocalyptic scenario painted by LHF in its lawsuit (pdf) is to be believed, recouping a mere $15,000 from each defendant begins to sound like a bargain. Certainly, the movie outfit will be hoping the judge sees it that way too.

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

Earlier this year, a group of well-known labels targeted Spinrilla, a popular hip-hop mixtape site and accompanying app with millions of users.

The coalition of record labels including Sony Music, Warner Bros. Records, and Universal Music Group, filed a lawsuit accusing the service of alleged copyright infringements.

“Spinrilla specializes in ripping off music creators by offering thousands of unlicensed sound recordings for free,” the RIAA commented at the time.

The hip-hop site countered the allegations by pointing out that it installed an RIAA-approved anti-piracy filter and actively worked with major record labels to promote their tracks. In addition, Spinrilla stressed that the DMCA’s safe harbor protects the company.

The DMCA safe-harbor shields Internet services from liability for copyright infringing users. However, to apply for this protection, companies have to meet certain requirements. This is where Spinrilla failed, according to a filing just submitted by the record labels.

The RIAA points out that Spinrilla failed to register a designated DMCA agent with the copyright office, which is one of the requirements. In addition, they claim that the mix-tape site took no clear action against repeat infringers, another prerequisite.

“Defendants have not registered a designated DMCA agent with the Copyright Office and have not adopted, communicated, or reasonably implemented a policy that prevents repeat infringement. Either of these undisputed facts alone renders Defendants ineligible for the protections of the DMCA,” the RIAA writes.

On the repeat infrimnger issue, the record labels say that some of Spinrilla’s “artist” accounts were used to upload infringing material for weeks on end.

“For example, one such ‘artist’ uploaded a new mixtape each week for over 80 consecutive weeks, each containing sound recordings that the RIAA identified to Spinrilla as infringing, including recordings by such well-known major label artists as Bruno Mars, The Weeknd, Missy Elliott, Common, and Ludacris,” RIAA notes.

Based on the above, RIAA argues that Spinrilla is not entitled to safe harbor protections under the DMCA. They ask the court for a summary judgment to render this defense inapplicable, which would be a severe blow to the hip-hop mixtape site.

“And, because Defendants have pinned their defense to liability almost entirely on the DMCA, a ruling now that Defendants are ineligible for the DMCA safe harbor will substantially streamline — if not end entirely — this litigation going forward.

“The Court should therefore grant Plaintiffs’ motion for partial summary judgment now,” the RIAA stresses (pdf).

While the case doesn’t end here, without DMCA safe harbor protection it will definitely be harder for Spinrilla to come out unscathed.

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

Russia has swiftly become a world leader when it comes to website blocking. Tens of thousands of websites are blocked in the country on copyright infringement and a wide range of other grounds.

However, as is often the case, not all citizens willingly subject themselves to these type of restrictions. On the contrary, many use proxies or anonymizing services such as VPNs and TOR to gain access.

In recent months, the Russian Government has worked on legislation to crack down on these circumvention tools as well, and local media report that President Vladimir Putin has now signed the proposed bill into law.

Under the new law, local telecoms watchdog Rozcomnadzor will keep a list of banned domains while identifying sites, services, and software that provide access to them. Rozcomnadzor will then try to contact the operators of the services, urging them to ban the blocked websites, or face the same fate.

The FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs will be tasked with monitoring offenses, which they will then refer to the telecoms watchdog.

In addition to targeting the circumvention sites, services, and their hosts, the bill targets search engines as well.

Search engines will be required to remove links to blocked resources from their results, as these would encourage people to access prohibited material. Search engines that fail to comply with the new requirements face a $12,400 penalty per breach.

Local search giant Yandex previously spoke out against the far-reaching requirements, describing them as unnecessary.

“We believe that the laying of responsibilities on search engines is superfluous,” a Yandex spokesperson said.

“Even if the reference to a [banned] resource does appear in search results, it does not mean that by clicking on it the user will get access, if it was already blocked by ISPs or in any other ways,” the company added.

The new legislation has not been without controversy. Earlier this month many Russians protested the plans, but this had little effect on the final vote. In the Duma, the bill was approved by 373 deputies. Only two voted against the plans, and another and two abstained.

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

This week we have two newcomers in our chart.

Spider-Man: Homecoming 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	(5)	Spider-Man: Homecoming (HDTS)	8.0 / trailer
2	(1)	The Mummy 2017 (Subbed HDRip)	5.8 / trailer
3	(…)	King Arthur: Legend of the Sword	7.2 / trailer
4	(3)	Going In Style	6.8 / trailer
5	(2)	Ghost In the Shell	6.8 / trailer
6	(4)	The Boss Baby	6.5 / trailer
7	(9)	S.W.A.T.: Under Siege	?.? / trailer
8	(7)	Wonder Woman (Subbed HDrip)	8.2 / trailer
9	(…)	Shot Caller	7.5 / trailer
10	(9)	Alien Covenant (Subbed HDrip)	6.7 / trailer

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