In the very early days of BitTorrent, making a list of decent file-sharing sites wasn’t particularly difficult. There was a list of ten or so that everyone knew, with a couple of dozen sundry others that mattered to the people who ran them and few others.

Then, out of nowhere, everything exploded. Soon it was impossible to keep up, sites appeared like mushrooms overnight and the lists got longer and longer. Today there isn’t a comprehensive list anywhere that can claim to cover them all, although some anti-piracy outfits think they’re close.

With that in mind, whenever a new and significant site or service appears seemingly out of nowhere, it’s always of interest to us at TF. With so many other pirate competitors around, how did this one manage to burst to the top so quickly? And, of course, when is it likely to do something newsworthy and how can we get in touch?

Getting information often involves asking around contacts built up over the years but everyday Internet tools also do a great job. After seeing where a site is hosted (special thanks to Cloudflare for making that more difficult), one of the early ports of call is a basic domain WHOIS. In the early days, these were often a goldmine. Today, thanks to increased security awareness, they’re much less useful.

But not always.

A couple of months ago it became apparent that a new streaming site/service was getting a lot of attention on various discussion platforms. The people who tried it said it was good, one of the best they’d seen actually. There was a lot of praise for the people behind the site too but no contact of mine had any idea who they were. That’s the idea, of course, but having this information never hurts when building the bigger picture.

So off to WHOIS we go, expecting something useless. A name was there alongside an address, but they’re often fake so there’s never much optimism at this point. Google StreetView showed the address exists but it never stood out as authentic. However, there was an email address and a reverse search showed that other domains were connected to the same person.

In the old days, nobody thought to isolate their pirate activity from their other stuff, so searches like this were usually quite useful. These days people are more savvy. Correction: some people are.

Although the same name was present on the other non-piracy related domains, the street address was different but the same on each. One of the domains also had a phone number that was confirmed real. So, armed with a name, email address and this telephone number, a Google search was formulated and a handful of results came up. One in particular stood out.

The page had been indexed by Google some time ago but the posting on the third party site had gone, probably because it became outdated. Of course, the Internet never forgets and Google Cache returned the post to its former glory. The forum post had been made by a somewhat likeable unemployed guy, clearly brilliant with computers, trying to get back on his feet with a fresh job.

I’m not entirely sure what image people have when they think of people who run pirate sites but much of the media has been bathed in the images of The Pirate Bay founders and their “screw you” approach. But this guy was polite to a fault and didn’t mind telling the forum’s users that despite his undeniable skills managing servers, he’d been battling depression and could no longer work full time.

At this juncture, you realize that while at one point you’d been trying to find out something about a swashbuckling pirate, instead you’ve actually found a real-life and perhaps vulnerable human being. And with further crucial details culled from this post (that linked to a previously uncovered domain and sundry other pieces of private information), there was little doubt this was the same guy.

Several weeks after that plea for work, the streaming site/service that prompted these searches got off the ground and as far as we know has been going full steam ahead ever since. It wouldn’t be a surprise, however, to see it disappear in a cloud of smoke.

All of the information above, when put together, leads to a proper company, run by a gentleman with the same name as the one in the domain’s WHOIS. The address for the company is fake, which offers some security, but the guy doesn’t appear to have considered that it’s possible to cross-reference with other companies incorporated in the past. In this case, the second company leads to his home address and other members of his family.

It’s a strange mixture of feelings when digging around on the Internet like this pays off. On the one hand, there’s a sense of achievement in piecing together the puzzle for research purposes. But on behalf of the guy at the other end, in this case there’s a sense of impending doom. Yes, he’s breaking the law. Yes, he should know better. But we’ve been writing about this stuff for long enough to know what might come next.

With just a few minutes of searching, there’s not much more to learn about this guy now, apart from his online alias, which is what I was hoping to find out in the beginning. In some ways i’d settle for that now – it’s not pleasant worrying about the future of people you don’t even know.

The bottom line is that i’m probably not alone in searching for this kind of information. Given the size of the operation, the attention it’s already receiving, and the content it offers and where, this same information is likely to be common knowledge at one anti-piracy group at least.

We all know it’s impossible to scrub the Internet clean but what’s most amazing in 2017 is that brilliant computer engineers have no idea how to keep themselves safe online. In this case, if it all goes bad, a criminal prosecution is likely. Upon conviction and given similar previous cases, a jail sentence is probable.

Unless this is the best decoy job ever undertaken by a careful pirate. In which case, it’s by far the best i’ve ever seen. Bravo…

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

The world’s largest entertainment companies in the spheres of music, movies, and gaming would jump for joy if the Internet piracy phenomenon came to a crashing halt tomorrow. (Spoiler: it won’t)

As a result, large sums of money are expended every day in an effort to keep unlawful distribution under control. Over the years there have been many strategies and several of these have involved targeting end users.

The world is a very big place and the tackling of piracy differs from region to region, but what most consumers of unauthorized media want to know is whether they’re putting themselves at risk.

The short answer is that no matter where people are, there is always some level of risk attached to obtaining and using pirate content. The long answer is more nuanced.

BitTorrent and other P2P protocols

By its very nature, using BitTorrent to access copyrighted content comes with a risk. Since downloaders are also distributors and their IP addresses are necessarily public, torrent users are extremely easy to track. In fact, with a minimum of equipment, any determined rightsholder is able spot and potentially uncover the identity of a file-sharer.

But while basic BitTorrent sharing gets a 0/10 for privacy, that’s a bit like saying that a speeding car gets 0/10 for stealth. Like the speeding car, anyone can see the pirating torrent user, but the big question is whether there’s anyone around who intends to do anything about it.

The big surprise in 2017 is that users are still statistically unlikely to face any consequences.

In the United States, for example, where copyright trolling can be a serious issue for those who get caught up in the net, the problem still only affects a tiny, tiny proportion of pirates. A one percent risk of getting snared would be overstating the risk but these are still odds that any gambler would be happy to take.

Surprisingly, pirates are also less likely to encounter a simple friendly warning than they were last year too. The “Six Strikes” Copyright Alerts System operated by the MPAA and RIAA, that set out to advise large volumes of pirates using notices sent via their ISPs, was discontinued in January. Those behind it gave in, for reasons unknown.

This means that millions of torrent users – despite exposing their IP addresses in public while sharing copyrighted content – are doing so without significant problems. Nevertheless, large numbers are also taking precautions, by using anonymization technologies including VPNs.

That’s not to say that their actions are legal – they’re not – but outside the few thousand people caught up in trolls’ nets each year, the vast and overwhelming majority of torrent users (which number well over 100 million) are pirating with impunity.

In the UK, not even trolling is a problem anymore. After a few flurries that seemed to drag on longer than they should, copyright trolls appear to have left the country for more lucrative shores. No cases have gone through the courts in recent times which means that UK users are torrenting pretty much whatever they like, with no legal problems whatsoever.

It’s important to note though, that their actions aren’t going unnoticed. Unlike the United States, the UK has a warning system in place. This means that a few thousand customers of a handful of ISPs are receiving notices each month informing them that their piratey behavior has been monitored by an entertainment company.

Currently, however, there are no punishments for those who are ‘caught’, even when they’re accused of pirating on a number of occasions. At least so far, it seems that the plan is to worry pirates into submission and in some cases that will probably work. Nevertheless, things can easily change when records are being kept on this scale.

Germany aside (which is overrun with copyright trolling activity), a handful of other European countries have also endured relatively small troll problems (Finland, Sweden, Denmark) but overall, file-sharers go about their business as usual across the continent. There are no big projects in any country aiming to punish large numbers of BitTorrent users and only France has an active warning notice program.

Canada and Australia have also had relatively small problems with copyright trolls (the former also has a fairly toothless ISP warning system) but neither country is considered a particularly ‘dangerous’ place to share files using BitTorrent. Like the United States, UK, and Europe, the chances of getting prosecuted for infringement are very small indeed.

Why such little enforcement?

There are a number of reasons for the apparent lack of interest in BitTorrent users but a few bubble up to the top. Firstly, there’s the question of resources required to tackle millions of users. Obviously, some scare tactics could be deployed by hitting a few people hard, but it feels like most companies have moved beyond that thinking.

That’s partly due to the more recent tendency of entertainment groups and governments to take a broader view of infringement, hitting it at its source by strangling funds to pirate sites, hitting their advertisers, blocking their websites, and attempting to forge voluntary anti-piracy schemes with search engines.

It’s also worth noting that huge numbers of people are routinely protecting themselves with VPN-like technology, which allows them to move around the Internet with much improved levels of privacy. Just recently, anti-piracy outfit Rightscorp partly blamed this for falling revenues.

Importantly, however, the nature of infringement has been changing for some time too.

A few years ago, most people were getting their movies and music from torrent sites but now they’re more likely to be obtaining their fix from a streaming source. Accessing the top blockbusters via a streaming site (perhaps via Kodi) is for the most part untraceable, as is grabbing music from one of the hundreds of MP3 portals around today.

But as recent news revealed, why bother with ‘pirate’ sites when people can simply rip music from sites like YouTube?

So-called stream-ripping is now blamed for huge swathes of piracy and as a result, torrent sites get far fewer mentions from anti-piracy groups than they did before.

While still a thorn in their side, it wouldn’t be a stretch to presume that torrent sites are no longer considered the primary problem they once were, at least in respect of music. Now, the ‘Value Gap‘ is more of a headache.

So, in a nutshell, the millions of people obtaining and sharing copyrighted content using BitTorrent are still taking some risks in every major country, and those need to be carefully weighed.

The activity is illegal almost everywhere, punishable in both civil and criminal courts, and has the potential to land people with big fines and even a jail sentence, if the scale of sharing is big enough.

In truth, however, the chances of the man in the street getting caught are so slim that many people don’t give the risks a second thought. That said, even people who drive 10mph over the limit get caught once in a while, so those that want to keep a clean sheet online often get a VPN and reduce the risks to almost 0%.

For people who stream, life is much less complicated. Streaming movies, TV shows or music from an illicit source is untraceable by any regular means, which up to now has made it almost 100% safe. Notably, there hasn’t been a single prosecution of a user who streamed infringing content anywhere in the world. In the EU it is illegal though, so something might happen in future, potentially…..possibly…..at some point….maybe.

And here’s the thing. While this is the general position today, the ‘market’ is volatile and has the ability to change quickly. A case could get filed in the US or UK next week, each targeting 50,000 BitTorrent users for downloading something that came out months ago. Nobody knows for sure so perhaps the best analogy is the one drummed into kids during high-school sex education classes.

People shouldn’t put themselves at risk at all but if they really must, they should take precautions. If they don’t, they could easily be the unlucky one and that is nearly always miserable.

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

ABS-CBN, the largest media and entertainment company in the Philippines, has booked another victory in the United States.

This week a federal court in Florida signed a default judgment against 19 websites that offered links to copyright infringing streams of ABS-CBN owned movies.

The lawsuit in question was filed in April and targets cinesilip.net, pinoychannel.co, pinoy-hd.com, and several other streaming portals that specialize in Philippine content. These sites also attract visitors from other countries, including the United States, where they target people of Philippine origin.

“Defendants’ entire Internet-based website businesses amount to nothing more than illegal operations established and operated in order to infringe the intellectual property rights of ABS-CBN and others,” the company wrote in its original complaint.

Despite facing hefty damages, none of the defendants turned up in court. This prompted ABS-CBN to file for a default judgment which was granted this week.

In his verdict, US District Judge Robert Scola Jr orders the 19 websites to pay $1 million in damages each. These damages are not for copyright infringement, as one would expect, but for violating ABS-CBN’s trademark. In addition, four of the defendants received an additional $30,000 in copyright infringement damages on top.

The media giant initially suggested that it would request the maximum of $2 million in trademark infringement damages per site, but has opted go “only” for half.

Part of the order

ABS-CBN’s most recent win follows a pattern of similar verdicts in recent months. The company has managed to score dozens of millions in damages from a wide variety of streaming sites with relative ease.

In addition to the millions of dollars that were awarded, Judge Scola also signed off on a permanent injunction to sign over the websites’ domain names to the media giant.

The question remains, of course, whether the company will ever see a penny in return. Most of the defendants remain unknown and even if they’re identified, most won’t have an extra million lying around.

To increase the chance of seeing something of monetary value in return, ABS-CBN also requested an injunction against the advertisers of several pirate sites in its latest lawsuit. If granted, this would allow the company to claim the pending advertising payouts. However, no such injunction was requested in the current case.

—

A copy of the default judgement is available abs-default, and a list of all the defendants is available below.

cinesilip.net
pinoychanneltv.me
pinoytambayantv.me
pinoytambayanreplay.net
drembed.com
embeds.me
fullpinoymovies.com
lambingan.ph
magtvna.com
pinoye.com
pinoyteleserye.org
pinoytvnetwork.net
pinoytopmovies.info
teleserye.me
watchpinaytv.com
wildpinoy.net
pinoy-hd.com
pinoytvreplay.ws
pinoychannel.co
wowpinoytambayan.ws
pinoytelebyuwers.se

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

Pirate video streaming sites are booming. Their relative ease of use through on-demand viewing makes them a viable alternative to P2P file-sharing, which traditionally dominated the piracy arena.

The popular movie streaming sites GoMovies, formerly known as 123movies, is one of the most-used streaming sites. While it’s built a steady userbase of millions of users over the past year, the site’s home keeps changing.

The latest move came this week. Going forward, the site will be active from GoStream.is, operating from the Icelandic gostream.is domain name.

While the site hasn’t officially commented on the reason for the move, on Twitter a site representative mentioned a Google ‘penalty’ as the main driver behind the recent change.

Penalized

When we looked at the issue more closely, we found that it’s not so much a penalty, but rather a response to a DMCA takedown request.

Earlier this week the site’s homepage was removed from Google’s search engine following a takedown notice from Warner Bros. This made it harder for users to find the site through Google, as various knockoffs were ranked higher in the search results for the “Gomovies” keyword.

In addition to relocating to a new domain name, the site has also changed the look of its homepage. Instead of a page filled with the most popular movies and TV-shows, it now lists a basic search box.

New GoMovies homepage

The homepage change is likely a response to Google’s search engine removal as well. The previous GoMovies domain was targeted by Warner Bros. because it listed a link to a pirated movie, but such links are no longer present on the new homepage.

That said, users who prefer the old look can still access it with a single click, which is prominently mentioned on the site.

Despite the domain name change, the GoMovies brand hasn’t changed. The logo and all other references to the site’s name remain intact. Confusingly, people who search for GoMovies on Google still won’t see the Gostream.is URL in the top results, but perhaps that will change in the future.

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

Of all the early founders of The Pirate Bay, it is Peter Sunde who has remained most obviously in the public eye. Now distanced from the site, Sunde has styled himself as a public speaker and entrepreneur.

Earlier this year the Swede (who is of both Norwegian and Finnish ancestry) sold his second most famous project Flattr to the parent company of Adblock Plus. Now, however, he has another digital baby to nurture, and this one is quite interesting.

Like many countries, Sweden operates a public early warning system. Popularly known as ‘Hesa Fredrik’, it consists of extremely loud outdoor sirens accompanied by radio and television messages.

The sirens can be activated in specific areas of the country wherever the problems exist. Fire, floods, gas leaks, threats to the water system, terrorist attacks or even war could trigger the alarm.

Just recently the ‘Hesa Fredrik’ alarm was sounded in Sweden, yet there was no planned test and no emergency. The public didn’t know that though and as people struggled to find information, authority websites crashed under the strain. The earliest news report indicating that it was a false alarm appeared behind a news site’s paywall. The national police site published no information.

The false alarm

Although Sunde heard the sirens, it was an earlier incident that motivated him to find a better solution. Speaking with Swedish site Breakit, Sunde says he got the idea during the Västmanland wildfire, which burned for six weeks straight in 2014 and became the largest fire in Sweden for 40 years.

“I got the idea during Västmanland fire. It took several days before text messages were sent to everyone in the area but by then it was already out of control. I thought that was so very bad when it is so easy to build something better,” Sunde said.

Sunde’s solution is the Hesa Fredrika app, which is currently under development by himself and several former members of the Flattr team.

“The goal is for everyone to download the app and then forget about it,” Sunde says.

When one thinks about the problem Sunde is trying to solve (i.e. the lack of decent and timely information in a crisis) today’s mobile phones provide the perfect solution. Not only do most people have one (or are near someone who does), they provide the perfect platform to deliver immediately deliver emergency services advice to people in a precise location.

“It is not enough for a small text to appear in the corner of the screen. I want to build something that makes the phone vibrate and sound so that you notice it properly,” Sunde told Breakit.

But while such an app could genuinely save lives in the event of a frankly rare event, Sunde has bigger ideas for the software that could extend its usefulness significantly.

Users will also be invited to add information about themselves, such as their doctor’s name or if they are a blood donor. The app user could then be messaged if there was an urgent need for a particular match. But while the app will be rolled out soon, it won’t be rushed.

“Since it is extremely important to the quality of the messages, we want as many partnerships as possible before we launch something,” Sunde says, adding that in true Pirate Bay style, it will be completely free for everyone.

“So it will remain forever,” he says. “My philosophy is such that I do not want people to pay for things that can save their lives.”

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