Over the years, the MPAA and RIAA have grabbed hundreds of headlines for their anti-piracy activities but recently their work has been more subtle. The same cannot be said of Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN.

BREIN is the most prominent outfit of its type in the Netherlands but it’s not uncommon for its work to be felt way beyond its geographical borders. The group’s report for the first six months of 2017 illustrates that in very clear terms.

In its ongoing efforts to reduce piracy on movies, music, TV shows, books and games, BREIN says it carried out 268 investigations during the first two quarters of 2017. That resulted in the takedown of 231 piracy-focused sites and services.

They included 45 cyberlocker linking sites, 30 streaming sites and 9 torrent platforms. The last eDonkey site in the Netherlands was among the haul after its operators reached a settlement with BREIN. The anti-piracy outfit reports that nearly all of the sites were operated anonymously so in many instances hosting providers were the ones to pull the plug, at BREIN’s request.

BREIN has also been actively tracking down people who make content available on file-sharing networks. These initial uploaders are considered to be a major part of the problem, so taking them out of the equation is another of BREIN’s goals.

In total, 14 major uploaders to torrent, streaming, and Usenet platforms were targeted by BREIN in the first six months of this year, with each given the opportunity to settle out of court or face legal action. Settlements typically involved a cash payment of between 250 and 7,500 euros but in several instances, uploaders were also required to take down the content they had uploaded.

In one interesting case, BREIN obtained an ex parte court order against a person running a “live cinema” on Facebook. He later settled with the anti-piracy group for 7,500 euros.

BREIN has also been active in a number of other areas. The group says it had almost 693,000 infringing results removed from Google search, pushing its total takedowns to more than 15.8 million. In addition, more than 2,170 listings for infringing content and devices were removed from online marketplaces and seven piracy-focused Facebook groups were taken down.

But while all of these actions have an effect locally, it is BREIN’s persistence in important legal cases that have influenced the copyright landscape across Europe.

Perhaps the most important case so far is BREIN v Filmspeler, which saw the anti-piracy group go all the way to the European Court of Justice for clarification on the law surrounding so-called “fully loaded” set-top boxes.

In a ruling earlier this year, the ECJ not only determined that selling such devices is a breach of copyright law, but also that people streaming content from an illicit source are committing an offense. Although the case began in the Netherlands, its effects will now be felt right across Europe, and that is almost completely down to BREIN.

But despite the reach of the ruling, BREIN has already been making good use of the decision locally. Not only has the operator of the Filmspeler site settled with BREIN “for a substantial amount”, but more than 200 sellers of piracy-configured set-top boxes have ceased trading since the ECJ decision. Some of the providers are the subject of further legal action.

Finally, a notable mention must go to BREIN’s determination to have The Pirate Bay blocked in the Netherlands. The battle against ISPs Ziggo and XS4ALL has been ongoing for seven years and like the Filmspeler case, required the attention of the European Court of Justice. While it’s still not over yet, it seems likely that the Supreme Court will eventually rule in BREIN’s favor.

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

There are no shortage of sites on the Internet that promise free software downloads but few do so with no strings attached. Thousands bundle adware and worse with ‘free’ software, while others bombard visitors with ads.

FossHub, on the other hand, does things very differently.

FossHub only offers free software, with no adware, spyware or malware attached. It doesn’t bombard users with advertising either. In fact, its download pages only have a single ad at the top. Well, that’s the plan at least but when it comes to BitTorrent software, things haven’t been so straightforward recently.

The problem centered around qBitTorrent, the free and open-source torrent client developed as an alternative to µTorrent. FossHub makes the client available in its file-sharing section and as the image below shows, has racked up close to 18 million downloads.

Previously, when people viewed the qBitTorrent page, they were presented with a single advert, courtesy of Google. However, a couple of months ago the guys at FossHub contacted the people behind the client to say they’d had problems with AdSense persistently flagging the qBitTorrent page as “unauthorized file sharing.”

“The consequence was that it stopped generating revenue for that page for FossHub,” a member of the qBitTorrent team explains.

TorrentFreak spoke with Sam at FossHub who provided more details.

“FossHub has hosted qBittorrent and other free projects binaries for almost a decade. For qBitorrent, we hosted its files for at least three years by now. We provide all the necessary bandwidth and other things that the project might need,” Sam said.

“It was not a problem for the last three years to show the single Google Adsense ad until the beginning of last month (June 2017) when we noticed a Policy violation message appearing under our account.

“Since we didn’t have any major issues with our account, we thought it must be a false positive. We tried to get in touch with Google AdSense team, but unfortunately, we received some (at least that what we think) standard canned responses.”

Sam says that FossHub wrote to Google AdSense support several times but never got to the bottom of the problem. Then, something catastrophic happened.

During June, presumably due to the problems with the qBitTorrent page, the entire FossHub site was banned by AdSense for seven days, thereby stopping the site from generating any revenue on any of the software offered.

“We wrote on a daily basis and attempted to request another review, but there was no human so that we can talk and try to obtain an answer,” Sam explained.

In the absence of any feedback, FossHub then took the decision to stop placing ads on any of the software available in its file-sharing section, despite none of the tools being illegal or infringing anyone’s copyrights. In a follow-up post on Reddit this week, FossHub underlined that fact.

“qBitorrent and other similar apps are legit software. You are responsible for what you choose to download and share,” a representative from the site wrote.

“Many free projects and sites publish their files via .torrent files. Just an excellent example of how qBitorrent and other similar clients can help you download files and allow GIMP project to save bandwidth: https://www.gimp.org/downloads/.”

The qBitTorrent team say they have made this matter public out of “frustration and protest”, not only due to the legality of file-sharing software but also in support of FossHub, who have helped qBitTorrent many times over the years.

“I keep wondering why the multitude of other unofficial sites, which are very popular and place ads on their qBittorrent pages too, aren’t being flagged too?” a member of the team responded.

“In any case, I am writing this to inform our user base about Google’s shenanigans. And if any of you works at AdSense, then please help FossHub talk to a real person or treat all sites fair by allowing or not allowing BitTorrent clients.”

Whether Google will take the opportunity to clarify the situation remains to be seen but it’s abundantly clear that the qBitTorrent software is not only entirely legal, it’s also one of the most respected torrent clients around.

“Despite this unpleasant incident we will support and help free projects such as qBitorrent as much as we can,” FossHub concludes.

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

Last Sunday, the long-awaited seventh season of the hit series Game of Thrones aired in dozens of countries worldwide.

The show has broken several piracy records over the years and, thus far, there has been plenty of interest in the latest season as well.

Like every year, the torrent download figures quickly ran into the millions. However, little is known about the traffic that goes to streaming portals, which have outgrown traditional file-sharing sites in recent years.

One of the main problems is that it’s impossible for outsiders to know exactly how many visitors pirate streaming services get. Traffic data for these sites are not public, which makes it difficult to put an exact figure on the number of views one particular video has.

Piracy monitoring firm MUSO hasn’t shied away from this unexplored territory though and has now released some hard numbers.

According to MUSO, the premiere episode of the seventh season of Game of Thrones has been pirated more than 90 million times in only three days. A massive number, which is largely driven by streaming traffic.

Exactly 77,913,032 pirate views came from streaming portals, while public torrent traffic sits in second place with 8,356,382 downloads. Another 4,949,298 downloads are linked to direct download sites, while the remaining 523,109 come from private torrents.

Why other platforms such as Usenet are not covered remains unexplained in the press release, but without these the total is already quite substantial, to say the least.

MUSO reports that most pirate traffic comes from the United States, with 15.1 million unauthorized downloads and streams. The United Kingdom follows in second place with 6.2 million, before Germany, India, and Indonesia, with between 4 and 5 million each.

Andy Chatterley, MUSO’s CEO and Co-Founder, notes that the results may come as a surprise to some industry insiders, describing them as “huge.”

“There is no denying that these figures are huge, so they’re likely to raise more than a few eyebrows in the mainstream industry, but it’s in line with the sort of scale we see across piracy sites and should be looked at objectively.

“What we’re seeing here isn’t just P2P torrent downloads but unauthorized streams and every type of piracy around the premiere. This is the total audience picture, which is usually unreported,” Chatterley adds.

While there is no denying that the numbers are indeed huge, it would probably be better to view them as estimates. MUSO generally sources its data from SimilarWeb, which uses a sample of 200 million ‘devices’ to estimate website traffic. Website visits are then seen as “downloads,” and the sample data is extrapolated into the totals.

This also explains why other types of download traffic, such as Usenet, are not included at all. These are not web-based. Similarly, the data doesn’t appear to cover all countries. Game of Thrones piracy is very substantial in China, for example, but in its previous reports, MUSO didn’t exclude Chinese traffic.

Taking the caveats above into account, MUSO’s data could be a good estimate of the total (web) pirate traffic for the Game of Thrones premiere. This would suggest some pretty high piracy rates in some countries, but we’ve seen stranger things.

—

Note: TorrentFreak reached out to MUSO for further details on its methodology. The company confirmed that its data is based on traffic to 23,000 of the most-used piracy sites. The data is collected from over 200 million devices, located in over 200 countries. This appears to confirm that it is indeed SimilarWeb data.

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Countries with the highest GoT piracy activity, according to MUSO:

United States of America: 15,075,951
United Kingdom: 6,252,903
Germany: 4,897,280
India: 4,335,331
Indonesia: 4,286,927
Philippines: 4,189,030
Canada: 3,182,851
France: 2,881,467
Turkey: 2,802,458
Vietnam: 2,436,149
Australia: 2,241,463
Russian Federation: 2,196,799
Netherlands: 1,881,718
Brazil: 1,796,759
Malaysia: 1,737,005

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

Exactly one year ago, on July 20th 2016, the torrent community was in dire straits.

Polish law enforcement officers had just apprehended Artem Vaulin, the alleged founder of KickassTorrents (KAT) at a local airport.

The arrest was part of a U.S. criminal case which also listed two other men as key players. At the time, KAT was the most-used torrent site around, so the authorities couldn’t have hit a more prominent target.

The criminal case was the end of the torrent site, but also the start of a lengthy court battle for the defendants.

To this day, Artem remains in Poland. He’s currently out on bail awaiting the final decision on the extradition request from the United States, while the other two defendants remain at large. If he is extradited, it’s expected that an extensive court battle will follow.

Although the original KickassTorrents is website no longer around, the ‘brand’ is still very much alive. Soon after the site went down several KAT copies and mirrors appeared. For many, however, the original site is still dearly missed.

The most prominent effort to create a replacement is the product of a group of well-known staffers from the original site. They began to rebuild the community by launching a forum for estranged KAT users last summer. A few months later they expanded their KATcr project to a full blown torrent site, mimicking the looks of the original.

Today, one year after it all started, we reach out to the new KATcr team to hear about their memories and future plans.

“Looking back it was shocking and disheartening for everyone, we know it happens but didn’t expect our ship to sink like that. We’ve written history there though, made many friends, learned a hell of a lot, and achieved so much,” Mr.Gooner recalls.

“It’s thanks to the original site and the loyal, supporting users that we were able to rebuild our ship and set sail again,” he adds.

While KATcr was able to put up a forum within days, getting fully organized was a more complex operation. Several former admins came on board, but without access to the original code or database, it took a few months to build a KAT replacement from scratch.

KATcr today

The site eventually relaunched as a full-blown torrent site last December. Although it doesn’t get as much traffic as the original KAT, many former users have found their way ‘back.’

“Minus a few hiccups and various other minor issues most new sites experience, traffic is increasing at a good rate. We are continuously improving and our name is well and truly out there now. The door is open and everyone is welcomed with open arms, we know all too well what it’s like to lose our home,” Mr.Gooner notes.

A lot of people would think twice before attempting to fill the shoes of a site that was hunted down by the US Department of Justice. However, the KATcr team believes that they are acting within the boundaries of the law.

“As far as we are concerned we operate to every letter of the law,” Mr.Gooner states in full confidence.

In the future, the site hopes to expand its userbase even further. Although it’s now been a year since the original KAT was pulled offline, the KATcr team prefers to look ahead, instead of dwelling in the past. There are some people who are still missed, but other than that, the focus is forward.

“I mostly miss those that are no longer with us. But rather than living in the past, the present day and the future is what matters, so we don’t tend to look back to miss anything else,” Mr.Gooner says.

Looking ahead is what alleged KickassTorrents operator Artem Vaulin will do as well. His concerns are different though.

The most pressing question that has to be answered in the near future is whether Poland will extradite him to the United States. Through his lawyers, he previously floated the idea of surrendering to the US voluntarily to “resolve” the pending charges, but only under the right conditions.

Meanwhile, he remains in Poland on bail.

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

While website blocking has become a common occurrence in many European countries, it has proven to be a rather cumbersome and slow-moving process in the Netherlands.

Seven years ago, Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN went to court to try and force local ISP Ziggo to block The Pirate Bay. Rival ISP XS4ALL later joined in on the action, which is still ongoing.

Initially, the court decided that blocking all subscribers went too far but BREIN wasn’t satisfied and took the case to a full trial, which they won.

Both Ziggo and XS4ALL filed subsequent appeals, arguing that the blockade was ineffective and denied subscribers’ free access to information, an argument which later proved successful.

The case eventually moved to the Supreme Court, which referred some questions to the European Court of Justice. The highest European court ruled that there are no legal obstacles to have a site like The Pirate Bay blocked, and now the ball is back with the Supreme Court again.

BREIN, however, has grown impatient and doesn’t want to wait until the Supreme Court comes to a final decision, which isn’t expected to happen before 2018. To speed things up, the anti-piracy group wants a new preliminary injunction at a lower court.

A new hearing on the Pirate Bay blockade is currently scheduled to take place at a court in The Hague early September, Tweakers reports.

BREIN director Tim Kuik informs TorrentFreak that the preliminary injunction will only be valid until the final verdict is handed down.

“We are requesting a preliminary injunction until the final decision in the procedural trial, now pending before the Dutch Supreme Court. After that, the final blocking decision applies,” Kuik says.

Kuik stresses that its action is supported by the recent EU Court of Justice ruling which clarified that The Pirate Bay facilitates copyright infringement, as well as an earlier ruling from 2014, which confirmed that EU Internet service providers can be required to block access to such sites.

Based on the second ruling, pirate site blockades are warranted if they make it harder for the public to access these sites. This is certainly the case here, according to Kuik, who refers to blockades in thirteen other EU countries.

In addition, the EU court stressed that blocking injunctions must be proportional, so as not to unnecessarily stop subscribers from lawfully accessing information.

Responding to the news, a Ziggo spokesman told Tweakers that BREIN is running ahead of itself. The provider is of the opinion that they have to wait for the Supreme Court to make a final decision before taking any further action.

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