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In this first episode of the new season, we meet the irrepressible Lloyd Kaufman, co-founder of Troma Entertainment and director of The Toxic Avenger.

Find out why Lloyd loves pirates – except state-sponsored ones; why vertical integration, media consolidation and the end of Net Neutrality would kill Troma; and why Lloyd is skeptical that crowdfunding systems like Patreon have a role in crowdfunding independent movies.

Check out Lloyd’s movies on his YouTube channel!

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Steal This Show aims to release bi-weekly episodes featuring insiders discussing copyright and file-sharing news. It complements our regular reporting by adding more room for opinion, commentary, and analysis.

The guests for our news discussions will vary, and we’ll aim to introduce voices from different backgrounds and persuasions. In addition to news, STS will also produce features interviewing some of the great innovators and minds.

Host: Jamie King

Guest: Lloyd Kaufman

Produced by Jamie King
Edited & Mixed by Riley Byrne
Original Music by David Triana
Web Production by Siraje Amarniss

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

In the wake of December 2014 action that closed down The Pirate Bay for weeks, Swedish police turned their focus to one of the country’s top streaming portals, Dreamfilm.se.

The site had been growing in popularity for a while, and together with defunct streaming site Swefilmer, whose admins also went on trial recently, the site accounted for up to 25% of online viewing in Sweden.

“After an administrator was detained and interrogated, it has been mutually agreed that dreamfilm.se will be shut down for good,” the site said in a January 2015 statement.

While the site later came back to life under a new name, Swedish police kept up the pressure. In February 2015, several more sites bit the dust including the country’s second largest torrent site Tankefetast, torrent site PirateHub, and streaming portal Tankefetast Play (TFPlay).

Image previously released by Tankafetast

It took more than two years, but recently the key people behind the sites had their day in court. According to IDG, all of the men admitted to being involved in Dreamfilm, but none accepted they had committed any crimes.

Yesterday the Linköping District Court handed down its decision and it’s particularly bad news for those involved. Aged between 21 and 31-years-old, the men were sentenced to between six and 10 months in jail and ordered to pay damages of around $147,000 to the film industry.

A 23-year-old man who founded Dreamfilm back in 2012 was handed the harshest sentence of 10 months. He was due to receive a sentence of one year in jail but due to his age at the time of some of the offenses, the Court chose to impose a slightly lower term.

A member of the Pirate Party who reportedly handled advertising and helped to administer the site, was sentenced to eight months in prison. Two other men who worked in technical roles were told to serve between six and 10 months.

Image published by Dreamfilm after the raid

Anti-piracy outfit Rights Alliance, which as usual was deeply involved in the prosecution, says that the sites were significant players in the pirate landscape.

“The network that included Dream Movie, Tankafetast, TF Play and Piratehub was one of Europe’s leading players for illegal file sharing and streaming. The coordination of the network was carried out by two of the convicted,” the group said.

“This case is an example of how organized commercial piracy used Sweden as a base and target for its operations. They are well organized and earn a lot of money and the risks are considered small and punishments low in Sweden,” lawyer Henrik Pontén said.

While lenient sentences are now clearly off the agenda, the convicted men still have a chance to appeal. It is not yet clear whether they will do so. In the meantime the Dreamfilm.se domain will be seized until the District Court decision becomes final.

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

While some pirates will probably never be tempted away from the digital high seas, over the past decade millions have ditched or tapered down their habit with the help of Spotify.

It’s no coincidence that from the very beginning more than a decade ago, the streaming service had more than a few things in common with the piracy scene.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek originally worked with uTorrent creator Ludvig ‘Ludde’ Strigeus before the pair sold to BitTorrent Inc. and began work on Spotify. Later, the company told TF that pirates were their target.

“Spotify is a new way of enjoying music. We believe Spotify provides a viable alternative to music piracy,” the company said.

“We think the way forward is to create a service better than piracy, thereby converting users into a legal, sustainable alternative which also enriches the total music experience.”

The technology deployed by Spotify was also familiar. Like the majority of ‘pirate’ platforms at the time, Spotify operated a peer-to-peer (P2P) system which grew to become one of the largest on the Internet. It was shut down in 2011.

But in the clearest nod to pirates, Spotify was available for free, supported by ads if the user desired. This was the platform’s greatest asset as it sought to win over a generation that had grown accustomed to gorging on free MP3s. Interestingly, however, an early Pirate Bay figure has now revealed that Spotify also had a use for the free content floating around the Internet.

As one of the early members of Sweden’s infamous Piratbyrån (piracy bureau), Rasmus Fleischer was also one of key figures at The Pirate Bay. Over the years he’s been a writer, researcher, debater and musician, and in 2012 he finished his PhD thesis on “music’s political economy.”

As part of a five-person team, Fleischer is now writing a book about Spotify. Titled ‘Spotify Teardown – Inside the Black Box of Streaming Music’, the book aims to shine light on the history of the famous music service and also spills the beans on a few secrets.

In an interview with Sweden’s DI.se, Fleischer reveals that when Spotify was in early beta, the company used unlicensed music to kick-start the platform.

“Spotify’s beta version was originally a pirate service. It was distributing MP3 files that the employees happened to have on their hard drives,” he reveals.

Rumors that early versions of Spotify used ‘pirate’ MP3s have been floating around the Internet for years. People who had access to the service in the beginning later reported downloading tracks that contained ‘Scene’ labeling, tags, and formats, which are the tell-tale signs that content hadn’t been obtained officially.

Solid proof has been more difficult to come by but Fleischer says he knows for certain that Spotify was using music obtained not only from pirate sites, but the most famous pirate site of all.

According to the writer, a few years ago he was involved with a band that decided to distribute their music on The Pirate Bay instead of the usual outlets. Soon after, the album appeared on Spotify’s beta service.

“I thought that was funny. So I emailed Spotify and asked how they obtained it. They said that ‘now, during the test period, we will use music that we find’,” Fleischer recalls.

For a company that has attracting pirates built into its DNA, it’s perhaps fitting that it tempted them with the same bait found on pirate sites. Certainly, the company’s history of a pragmatic attitude towards piracy means that few will be shouting ‘hypocrites’ at the streaming platform now.

Indeed, according to Fleischer the successes and growth of Spotify are directly linked to the temporary downfall of The Pirate Bay following the raid on the site in 2006, and the lawsuits that followed.

“The entire Spotify beta period and its early launch history is in perfect sync with the Pirate Bay process,” Fleischer explains.

“They would not have had as much attention if they had not been able to surf that wave. The company’s early history coincides with the Pirate Party becoming a hot topic, and the trial of the Pirate Bay in the Stockholm District Court.”

In 2013, Fleischer told TF that The Pirate Bay had “helped catalyze so-called ‘new business models’,” and it now appears that Spotify is reaping the benefits and looks set to keep doing so into the future.

An in-depth interview with Rasmus Fleischer will be published here soon, including an interesting revelation detailing how TorrentFreak readers positively affected the launch of Spotify in the United States.

Spotify Teardown – Inside the Black Box of Streaming Music will be published early 2018.

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

Pirate sites come and go all the time. Often they disappear quietly, without an official word, but that’s not the case with the popular streaming site Coke and Popcorn.

Late last week the streaming portal suddenly posted a surprise update announcing that it had shut down its service for good.

While the exact reasons for the surprise decision remain unknown, the site’s operator is clear that users should hold no hope for a comeback. Instead, he points them to “better” alternatives such as Netflix.

“As many of you noticed the site has not been updating for quite some time. It is time to say good bye, Sorry to announce that Coke & Popcorn had closed down for good,” a message posted on the site reads.

“There are now a lot of other better places to enjoy online TV, we recommend Netflix,” the site’s operator adds.

Coke and Popcorn, which operated from a Swiss domain name, has been around for several years but remained out of the spotlight most of the time.

In 2014 it was listed by Netnames in a piracy advertising report, where it was classified as a medium-sized linking site, which potentially earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in yearly revenue.

It’s possible that there is some kind of legal pressure behind the “voluntary” shutdown, but the true reason is open to speculation. A decline in advertising revenue may have prompted it to throw in the towel, however.

Taking a page from the anti-piracy playbook, Coke and Popcorn closes with a warning to former users, urging them not to trust copycats as these may be ridden with malicious ads or worse. Instead, they should try Netflix.

“If you see other fake duplicates of CnP in the future who claim to be us, we urge you NOT to use them as they all will probably serve harmful virus & malicious ads and hidden software that WILL harm your computers & steal your private information,” the operator warns.

“Please be careful and use only safe alternative sites like Netflix.”

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

More than five years have passed since Megaupload’s shutdown early 2012.

The criminal investigation took out the largest file-storage site of its time, and also meant that millions of users lost access to their personal files as collateral damage.

One of the affected users is Kyle Goodwin, who operates a sports video company in Ohio. He used Megaupload as part of his business, to safely store large videos he created himself.

Although many assumed that the Megaupload data had been permanently lost, Mr. Goodwin wasn’t ready to throw in the towel that easily. A few months after the raid he asked the court to assist him and others to retrieve their personal property.

Unfortunately for him, the District Court has yet to issue an order that allows former users of the site to retrieve their data. Assisted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Williams Mullen law firm, and Stanford’s Hoover Institution, many requests were filed but without a satisfying outcome.

Having exhausted nearly every option, Mr. Goodwin’s legal team urged the Appeals Court to intervene last month. The Government’s apparent disregard for the rights of former Megaupload users continues to hurt innocent bystanders, they argued.

Mr. Goodwin’s lawyers asked the court to issue a ‘writ of mandamus‘ to the trial court, requesting it to act on their client’s behalf and create a process for Megaupload users to regain access their data.

While the EFF hoped this would break through the five-year log-jam, the Appeals Court denied the request late last week.

“Although, as Mr. Goodwin points out, his motion for return of property has been pending for a significant period of time without decision, we do not find on this record that the district court has refused to adjudicate the matter,” the order reads (pdf).

“Accordingly, the petition for writ of mandamus is denied without prejudice,” the Appeals Court added.

The Appeals Court has the power to intervene in cases where a District Court “persistently and without reason” refuses to make a decision, but found that this is not the case here.

This means that the stalemate continues, even after five years. Mr. Goodwin’s data remains out of reach for the time being, and the same is true for all other users who still hope to be reunited with their files.

His legal team is not giving up though. EFF Senior Staff Attorney Mitch Stoltz informs TorrentFreak that they will continue their efforts to return the data to the rightful owners.

“We’re disappointed that the appeals court refused to step in to get this case moving. Kyle Goodwin and many others have been waiting five years to get their data back, and soon it might be un-recoverable. We will continue asking the district court to act on Mr. Goodwin’s request,” Stoltz says.

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