In recent years, file-sharers all across Europe have been threatened with lawsuits, if they don’t pay a significant settlement fee.

The process was pioneered in Germany where it turned into an industry by itself, and copyright holders later went after alleged pirates in the UK, Finland and elsewhere.

These so-called “copyright trolls” have also landed in Denmark, where the number of targeted Internet subscribers is growing at a rapid rate.

In 2015, rightsholders received permission from courts to obtain the personal details of 6,187 alleged BitTorrent pirates, based on their IP-addresses. A year later the number of accused subscribers increased by nearly 250 percent, to 21,163.

Local ISPs are not happy with this development and plan to fight it in court, Berlingske Business reports.

“We think there is a fundamental legal problem because the courts do not really decide what is most important: the legal security of the public or the law firms’ commercial interests,” Telenor’s Legal Director Mette Eistrøm Krüger says.

As is often the case in these type anti-piracy campaigns, the rightsholders prefer to settle out of court. Thus far, no named defendant has mounted a defense before a Danish judge.

“There was a verdict in one case, and this was a default judgment because the defendant didn’t show up,” Mette Eistrøm Krüger adds.

To stop the trolling efforts from getting out of hand, Telenor is now preparing to build a new case at the Frederiksberg Court, hoping to protect the identities of its subscribers.

This is not the first time Telenor has taken action against these anti-piracy efforts. The ISP did the same in Norway, with success. Last month the Norwegian Supreme Court threw out several troll cases due to a lack of evidence.

In Denmark, Telenor is supported by fellow Internet provider Telia, which says it will be more critical toward trolling efforts going forward.

The branch organization Telecommunications Industry in Denmark notes that other ISPs are backing Telenor’s efforts as well. The group’s director, Jakob Willer, describes the copyright trolling scheme as a “mafia-like” practice, which should be stopped.

“There is full support from the industry to Telenor to take this fight and protect customers against mafia-like practices,” Willer says.

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

Last September, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced plans to modernize copyright law in Europe.

The proposals (pdf) are part of the Digital Single Market reforms, which have been under development for the past several years.

The proposals cover a broad range of copyright-related issues, but one stands out as being particularly controversial. Article 13 requires certain online service providers to become deeply involved in the detection and policing of allegedly infringing copyright works, uploaded to their platforms by users.

Although its effects will likely be more broad, the proposal is targeted at the so-called “value gap” (1,2,3), i.e the notion that platforms like YouTube are able to avoid paying expensive licensing fees (for music in particular) by exploiting the safe harbor protections of the DMCA and similar legislation.

To close this loophole using Article 13, services that provide access to “large amounts” of user-uploaded content would be required to cooperate with rightsholders to prevent infringing works being communicated to the public.

This means that platforms like YouTube would be forced to take measures to ensure that their deals with content providers to distribute official content are protected by aggressive anti-piracy mechanisms.

The legislation would see platforms forced to deploy content-recognition, filtering and blocking mechanisms, to ensure that only non-infringing content is uploaded in the first place, thus limiting the chances that unauthorized copyrighted content will be made available to end users.

Supporters argue that the resulting decrease in availability of infringing content will effectively close the “value gap” but critics see the measures as disproportionate, likely to result in censorship (no provision for fair use), and a restriction of fundamental freedoms. Indeed, there are already warnings that such a system would severely “restrict the way Europeans create, share, and communicate online.”

The proposals have predictably received widespread support from entertainment industry companies across the EU and the United States, but there are now clear signs that the battle lines are being drawn.

On one side are the major recording labels, movie studios, and other producers. On the other, companies and platforms that will suddenly become more liable for infringing content, accompanied by citizens and scholars who feel that freedoms will be restricted.

The latest sign of the scale of opposition to Article 13 manifests itself in an open letter to the European Parliament. Under the Copyright for Creativity (C4C) banner and signed by the EFF, Creative Commons, Wikimedia, Mozilla, EDRi, Open Rights Group plus sixty other organizations, the letter warns that the proposals will cause more problems than they solve.

“The European Commission’s proposal on copyright in the Digital Single Market failed to meet the expectations of European citizens and businesses. Instead of supporting Europeans in the digital economy, it is backward looking,” the groups say.

“We need European lawmakers to oppose the most damaging aspects of the proposal, but also to embrace a more ambitious agenda for positive reform.”

In addition to opposing Article 11 (the proposed Press Publishers’ Right), the groups ask the EU Parliament not to impose private censorship on EU citizens via Article 13.

“The provision on the so-called ‘value gap’ is designed to provoke such legal uncertainty that online services will have no other option than to monitor, filter and block EU citizens’ communications if they want to have any chance of staying in business,” the groups write.

“The Commission’s proposal misrepresents some European Court rulings and seeks to impose contradictory obligations on Member States. This is simply bad regulation.”

Calling for the wholesale removal of Article 13 from the copyright negotiations, the groups argue that the reforms should be handled in the appropriate contexts.

“We strenuously oppose such ill thought through experimentation with intermediary liability, which will hinder innovation and competition and will reduce the opportunities available to all European businesses and citizens,” they add.

C4C concludes by calling on lawmakers to oppose Article 13 while seeking avenues for positive reform.

The full letter can be found here (pdf)

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

As recently as perhaps six years ago, there was no question over where the majority of Internet video pirates would be getting their online fix. Just as they had done for at least as many years before, BitTorrent was the go-to protocol.

While still massively popular today to the tune of scores of millions of daily users, torrent consumption has been tempered in recent years by the rise of streaming platforms. These sites, with their glossy indexes and YouTube-like interfaces, grant easy access to a wide range of movies and TV shows, almost as quickly as their torrent counterparts.

So why, when these streaming services are so easy to use, would anyone bother with relatively cumbersome torrent downloads? The answer isn’t immediately obvious but for those with intimate experience of both, it’s a pretty serious question.

First of all, we have the important question of content ‘ownership’.

While people have easy access to the latest movies on streamingmovies123 or whatever .com, users never ‘own’ those streams. They are absolutely transient and once the stop button is pressed, that movie or TV show instance is gone forever. The user downloads the file of course, but it is almost immediately dumped into the ether.

For the same download bandwidth expenditure, the user can visit a torrent site and obtain exactly the same content. This time, however, there are two key differences. One, they help to distribute that content among other downloaders and two, they get to keep that content for as long as they choose.

Storing content locally is important to many pirates. Not only can that content be played on any device of the users’ choosing, it can also be played offline. Sure, it takes up some drive space, but it doesn’t require streamingmovies123 to stay online to be enjoyed. It can be played again, potentially forever, and certainly long after the streaming site has disappeared, which they often do.

But while maintaining control of content rarely has a downside for the consumer, the issue of whether distribution (uploading) via BitTorrent is ‘good’ depends on perspective.

Users of streaming sites will correctly argue that with no uploading, they are much safer than their torrenting counterparts. Torrent users, on the other hand, note that their participation in uploading helps to provide content to others. Torrent users are effectively a plus to the piracy ecosystem, while streamers (if we refer to them in torrent terms) are merely leechers.

There’s a whole generation of streaming consumers coming through today who literally have no idea about the concept of sharing. They do not understand where the content comes from, nor do they care. This lack of ‘pirate education’ could eventually present a negative for content availability.

While we’re on that topic, there’s the important question of how and why pirated content travels through the online ecosystem.

There are long-established routes for content from so-called ‘top sites’ to be shifted quickly to torrent sites. Furthermore, torrent sites provide platforms for non-scene P2P releasers to distribute their offerings to the public. In this respect, torrent sites contribute much more to the overall piracy ecosystem than most streaming sites.

Also, there’s the not inconsiderable issue of where streaming sites obtain their content. Of course, many people involved in that area of piracy will have either direct or indirect top-site access, but many simply choose to grab their content from either public or private torrents like the average user might. It’s not hard to see who relies on who here.

This brings us to how each kind of piracy is perceived by Hollywood interests. It doesn’t take Einstein to reveal that both torrents and streaming are the enemy, but since streaming platforms are closest to legitimate offerings such as Netflix and Amazon, the threat they pose is often portrayed as being the greatest.

Indeed, the rise of modified Kodi setups (and the aggressive response to them) seems to support that, with piracy shifting from the relatively geeky torrent environment to the point-and-click living room domain, occupied by the general public.

So the question of what is best – torrents or streaming – is largely down to consumer preference. However, for those with an interest in the piracy ecosystem, it’s a question of whether streaming can improve or even survive without torrents, and whether exclusively supporting the former is a potential road to nowhere.

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

While ‘pirate’ sports streaming sites have been around for over a decade, in recent years rightsholders have taken a more aggressive stance.

The UK Premier League has triggered several police investigations, for example, which have led to the shutdown of several streaming platforms.

In Germany, the local football league (DFL) and Sky Deutschland are involved in a similar battle. The rightsholder and broadcaster feel that unauthorized streaming sites threaten their livelihoods so they’ve initiated legal action in response.

One of the prime targets of these efforts was the streaming portal Stream4u.tv, which was broadcasting sports events without permission. In addition to the site’s operator, a civil lawsuit filed by Sky also targeted the hardware provider that offered the equipment used to decrypt and distribute the streaming signal.

Last week Sky declared a major victory after The District Court of Hamburg ruled that both the site operator and hardware provider are liable for copyright infringement.

Together, both defendants must now pay €18,000 in damages. A clear win for Sky, especially since the streaming portal has been shut down as well.

Stream4u.tv (via)

Aside from the damages, Sky highlights that this is the first time that a third-party intermediary has been held liable for copyright infringement in a case like this. They hope the result will send a strong deterrent message to others.

According to Sky, the ruling effectively means that every technical service provider faces a significant liability risk if they are aware of the illegal use of its services and do not immediately address legitimate complaints.

“The ruling is a warning for all those involved in the illegal distribution of Sky content,” says Thomas Stahn, Director Anti-Piracy & Technology at Sky Deutschland, commenting on the case.

“In contrast to criminal law, every helper is also liable for the full damages suffered by the injured parties – regardless of whether or not it profited from the illegal business,” he adds.

Sky informs TorrentFreak that the Stream4u.tv operator was not present at the court hearings, only the hardware provider. The company could not provide any additional details on the provider but noted that the hardware itself is not illegal.

“The hardware in question was used to receive the Sky broadcast signal and encode it for transmission via the internet. The hardware itself is not illegal in general,” a Sky spokesperson told us.

This isn’t the first victory of its kind for the German division of Sky. As Tarnkappe points out, late last year two people were convicted for their involvement with a sports streaming platform, resulting in a prison sentence for one of them.

Sky Deutschland has several criminal and civil copyright cases pending in Germany, so this isn’t likely to be the last verdict we’ll see against sports streaming sites and services.

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.

John Wick: Chapter 2 is the most downloaded movie for the second week in a row.

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	(…)	John Wick: Chapter 2	8.0 / trailer
2	(1)	Logan	8.6 / trailer
3	(3)	The Boss Baby	6.5 / trailer
4	(2)	The Fate of the Furious (subbed HDRip)	6.7 / trailer
5	(…)	A Cure For Wellness	6.5 / trailer
6	(7)	T2 Trainspotting	7.7 / trailer
7	(4)	Ghost in The Shell (Subbed HDRip)	6.9 / trailer
8	(6)	Kong: Skull Island (Subbed HDRip)	7.0 / trailer
9	(5)	First Fight	5.7 / trailer
10	(8)	Beauty and the Beast	7.6 / trailer

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