The Kodi media player software, previously known as XBMC, has seen a massive surge in popularity in recent years.

More and more people have started to use Kodi as their main source of entertainment, often with help from unofficial add-ons that allow them to access pirated movies and TV-shows.

While there has been plenty of anecdotal evidence on how prevalent its use is, there hasn’t been much research to back this up. A new report published by broadband management company Sandvine today, aims to fill this gap.

Sandvine analyzed a dataset from multiple North America tier one fixed-line provider, which covers over 250,000 anonymized households throughout North America. Using this data, it was able to estimate how many households actively use at least one Kodi device.

“The Kodi application itself does not generate much data, but it is easy to detect within a household due to its ‘heartbeat’ traffic which can easily be identified,” Sandvine reports.

Overall Sandvine estimates that 8.8% of the households with Internet access across North America have an active Kodi device. This translates to several millions of households and many more potential users.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that all these people are pirates. Kodi has plenty of legal uses, and so Sandvine also looked at the use of pirate add-ons specifically.

Looking at the various traffic sources for the streaming data, including file-hosts, the company determined that 68.6% of the households with Kodi devices also use unofficial, or “pirate” add-ons.

The report was in part triggered by an increased interest from content service providers, copyright owners, and regulators. Some of these pointed to the Kodi software as the root of the piracy problem, but Sandvine laudably rejects this claim.

“In some of the discussion Sandvine has had with the parties listed above, Kodi is often referred to by name as the root of the streaming of unlicensed content problem, but that is wrong,” Sandvine notes.

“Kodi simply serves as a front end; If Kodi disappeared tomorrow, then all of the content made available through the unofficial Add-ons would quickly be made be accessible via a web browser, or by another media player, and the parties that are benefitting today, would continue to profit,” they add.

Sandvine should receive praise for making such a clear distinction, something the media often fails to do, which is cause for great frustration among the Kodi developers.

Finally, the company notes that there are clear geographical differences in Kodi adoption within North America. In Canada, for example, over 10% of the households have a Kodi device installed, which is a higher adoption rate than in the US.

It will be interesting to see how these trends develop during the years to come. For now, Kodi continues to draw more and more users, so it wouldn’t be a big surprise if the numbers further increase.

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

While movies can be obtained from BitTorrent sites and live TV watched on unlicensed streaming portals, the combined experience generally lacks convenience when compared to official services. There is, however, a massive price difference to sweeten the deal.

Illicit IPTV services, on the other hand, nicely fill the middle ground. Providing decent quality streaming TV with VOD services often alongside, they offer superior convenience at bargain basement prices. As a result, these are increasingly being targeted by copyright holders.

IPTV services are prevalent across Europe with many anti-piracy groups trying to mitigate the threat. One such outfit is Netherlands-based BREIN who recently went to court in an effort to shut down an IPTV supplier.

In an ex-parte application dated April 27, 2017, BREIN asked for an immediate injunction to prevent live TV and on-demand streams being offered by the provider. BREIN described the infringement as both “large scale” and “professional”.

According to the anti-piracy outfit, the supplier offered subscriptions costing between 80 euros and 119.95 euros per year, which provided almost 1,800 channels of infringing content.

Included in the package was a VOD service, which offered around 545 HD movies organized into categories including action, comedy, sci-fi, kids and drama. These kinds of services often contain the latest movies, beyond what even Netflix is able to offer.

Since the content provided by the supplier was accessed via a hyperlink (in this case an .M3U file), BREIN cited the recent GS Media decision from the European Court of Justice, which found that there is a communication to the public when illicit content is supplied via a for-profit link.

The anti-piracy group also noted that streams would often be accompanied by corresponding movie posters or DVD covers, which also amounts to copyright infringement according to local case law.

On May 1, 2017, the supplier received the ex parte order, upon which BREIN agreed to enter into a settlement agreement of 10,000 euros plus further potential multiple penalties of the same amount.

“The provider has the obligation to pay a penalty of 10,000 euros for each individual IPTV subscription, individual hyperlink, or day that he acts in violation of the court order and continues with the sale of IPTV subscriptions,” BREIN said in a statement.

While these amounts may sound large, the initial 10,000 euro settlement seems relatively reasonable given the substantial penalties that could be handed down following a successful direct infringement lawsuit.

Of course, if the supplier wants to avoid further penalties, his service needs to come down, something which is likely to infuriate customers that have already paid money up front. BREIN is happy to pile on the pressure in this respect and is encouraging people to be proactive.

“We advise consumers who bought such a media player and / or subscription to retrieve their money from the seller,” says Kuik.

“Once the links are no longer tracked, the boxes and subscriptions stop working. People are getting excited. It’s better to spend your money on legal offerings, so you pay for innovation and creation and you can keep enjoying new content.”

In the meantime, dozens of similar suppliers will move in to fill the gap. Whether once-bitten customers will risk another spend will remain to be seen but the usual advice around IPTV discussion forums is not to commit to long-term subscriptions – they can end in disappointment.

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

In the world of file-sharing, few will argue that the environment in 2017 is very, very different from that of 2007. Running sites is far from straightforward, with all kinds of roadblocks likely to appear along the way.

One of the early problems is getting new sites off the ground. Ten years ago it was easy to find mainstream technology sites touting the latest additions to the pirate landscape. These days, however, reporting is mainly restricted to innovative platforms or others with some particularly newsworthy aspect.

With those loose advertising opportunities now largely off-limits, new sites and those on the fringes are often taking more unusual approaches. Today another raised its head revealing a particularly poorly judged promotional effort.

Back in April, a new torrent site hit the scene. Called RapidTorrent, it’s a meta-search engine that by definition indexes other torrent sites. Like many others, it’s doing whatever it can to get noticed, but it’s probably the first to try and do that by using Wikipedia.

Early today, the Wikipedia pages of a whole range of defunct and live torrent sites were edited to include links to RapidTorrent. One of the first was the page for defunct meta-search engine BTDigg.

“In May 2017 BTDig (sic) staff launched rapidtorrent, a fast torrent search engine,” the page now reads, along with a link to the new torrent site.

Similar edits could also be found for Demonoid’s page, which was also defaced to note that “In May 2017 Demonoid launched rapidtorrent, a fast torrent search engine.”

In fact, links to the new torrent site were inserted in a range of other pages including The Pirate Bay, Mininova, isoHunt and ExtraTorrent.

While many people might like the opportunity to discover a new torrent site, there can be few who appreciate the defacing of Wikipedia to achieve that goal. Millions of people rely on the platform for information so when that is compromised by spam and what amount to lies, people are seriously misled.

Indeed, striking while the iron’s hot, the Wikipedia spam this morning also extended to the French language Wikipedia page of NYAA, a site that unexpectedly shut down only this week.

As shown in the image below, the site’s real domain has been completely removed only to be replaced with RapidTorrent’s URL.

While the other edits are bad enough, this one seems particularly cruel as people looking for information on the disappeared site (which is in the top 500 sites in the world) will now be led directly to a non-affiliated domain.

Those that do follow the link are greeted with another message on the site itself which claims that the search engine is being run by the original NYAA team, while at the same time soliciting bitcoin donations.

For new torrent sites looking for an early boost in traffic, times are indeed hard, so it’s no surprise that some turn to unorthodox methods. However, undermining free and valuable resources like Wikipedia is certainly not the way to do it, will not produce the required results, and is only likely to annoy when the deception is unveiled.

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

While there is no shortage of pirated films on the Internet, Ultra-high-definition content is often hard to find.

Not only are the file sizes enormous, but the protection is better than that deployed to regular content. UHD Blu-Ray Discs, for example, are protected with AACS 2.0 encryption which was long believed to unbreakable.

A few hours ago, however, this claim was put in doubt. Out of nowhere, a cracked copy of a UHD Blu-Ray Disc surfaced on the HD-focused BitTorrent tracker UltraHDclub.

The torrent in question is a copy of the Smurfs 2 film and is tagged “The Smurfs 2 (2013) 2160p UHD Blu-ray HEVC Atmos 7.1-THRONE.” This suggests that AACS 2.0 may have been “cracked” although there are no further technical details provided at this point.

UltraHDclub is proud of the release, though, and boasts of having the “First Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc in the NET!”

Those who want to get their hands on a copy of the file have to be patient though. Provided that they have access to the private tracker, it will take a while to download the entire 53.30 GB disk.

At the time of writing, there are still very few seeders available, which means that progress is slow.

TorrentFreak reached out to both the uploader of the torrent and an admin at the site hoping to find out more, but thus far we have yet to hear back. From the details provided, the copy appears to be the real deal although not everyone agrees.

TorrentFreak spoke to an expert at a well-known torrent distribution group who reviewed the media information and compared it to the retail UHD Blu-Ray Disc.

While the audio seems to match, the Maximum Content Light Level and Maximum Frame-Average Light Level listed in the media info appear to be different, and the colors in the screenshots are off too. This means that it’s warranted to remain reserved when it comes to definitive “cracked” claims at this time.

The potential ‘breakthrough’ release hasn’t gone unnoticed though, and in various discussion forums people are suggesting that AACS 2.0 must have been broken. Hundreds of downloaders have jumped on the release too, congratulating the uploader.

“Great job! Congratulations to the person/team who achieved this awesome milestone. I’ve got nothing but love for you!” one downloader writes.

“This is history in the making and I`m proud and glad to be able to participate and experience it first hand. This is so freakin amazing and it feels sort of unreal but yet it isn`t which is the best part,” another one notes.

If the encryption has indeed been broken it will be bad news for AACS, the decryption licensing outfit that controls it. The company, founded by a group of movie studios and technology partners including Warner Bros, Disney, Microsoft and Intel, has put a lot of effort into making the technology secure.

If more information becomes available, we will update the article accordingly.

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

Net neutrality is the notion that ISPs should treat all data traveling via the Internet in the same manner. Providers shouldn’t discriminate based on user, content or platform type, nor devices attached to the network.

While there are plenty of entities who support these principles, the free-flow of information is sometimes perceived as a threat. The concept of so-called fast and slow lanes with variable pricing, for example, has the potential to cause many anti-competitive headaches.

But for the content industries, particularly those involved in movies, TV shows, and other video entertainment, the concept of net neutrality has the potential to complicate plans to block and otherwise restrict access to copyright-infringing material.

As a result, Hollywood is making its feelings known both locally and overseas, including in India where it’s just contributed to the country’s net neutrality debate.

Early 2017, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) asked for input on its “Consultation Paper on Net Neutrality”, the fifth in the past two years aimed at introducing a legal framework for net neutrality.

Published by MediaNama in January, the 14-point questionnaire received responses from many stakeholders, including the Motion Picture Distribution Association, the local division of the MPA/MPAA representing Paramount, Sony, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Disney and Warner.

Exceptions to net neutrality principles for pirate content

In response to a question which asked whether there should be exceptions to net neutrality in order for ISPs to implement traffic management practices (TMP), Hollywood is clear. Net neutrality should only ever apply when Internet traffic is lawful, and ISPs should be able to take measures to deal with infringing content.

“For the Motion Picture Association’s members, as representatives of an industry that creates and distributes copyrighted content, it is critical that the Internet does not serve as a haven for illegal activity and that [service providers] should be permitted to take reasonable action to prevent the transfer of stolen copyrighted content,” the Hollywood group writes.

“It is commonly accepted that the requirements of [net neutrality] apply only in respect of access to lawful content. This implies that a [service provider] to, say, block content pursuant to a direction from authorities authorised by law to do so, and after following due process – will not be considered unreasonable.”

The studios say they’re in agreement that the Indian government should have the right to regulate content in “emergency situations” and also whenever content is deemed illegal, so in these instances, net neutrality rules would not apply.

Copyright-infringing content fits the latter category, but the MPA wants the government to include specific wording in any regulation that expressly denotes pirate material as exempt from the freedoms of net neutrality.

“We urge that a clear statement be included in any eventual net neutrality regulation that specifies that pirated and infringing content is unlawful and therefore not subject to the normal net neutrality policy of prohibiting content-based regulations,” the studios say.

Exemptions for blocking and throttling to counter piracy

The idea that infringing content should be blocked, throttled, or otherwise hindered is a cornerstone of Hollywood’s fight against infringing content worldwide, despite it being unable to achieve those things in its own backyard. In India, however, the studios see blocking as a fair response to the spread of infringing content and something that should be allowed under net neutrality rules.

“As a remedy to address the dissemination of, or unauthorized access to, unlawful content, blocking and throttling are necessary and appropriate measures,” the studios note.

“Blocking access to infringing sites is not inconsistent with net neutrality. In fact, blocking illegal sites, especially when they originate from outside the country, is often the only effective remedy to prevent access to illegal content in India.

“[Service providers] must be able to block sites that link, stream, make available, or otherwise communicate to the public unauthorized or illegal content.”

Rightsholders and ISPs should work together

In both the United States and Europe, Hollywood is an advocate of voluntary anti-piracy measures, with content owners and ISPs collaborating to hinder the spread of infringing content. According to its submission to the telecoms regulator, Hollywood would like to see something similar in India.

When forming its regulations, the studios would like to see service providers “encouraged” to work with rightsholders to “employ the best available tools and technologies” to fight piracy while affirming ISPs’ right to use traffic management practices (TMP) to deal with the spread of infringing content.

Furthermore, Hollywood would like a clear statement that the use of TMPs against infringing content “should not depend on an advance judicial or regulatory determination of ‘lawfulness’ prior to every use.” In other words, court oversight should not generally be required.

In conclusion, the MPA underlines that rightsholders and rightsholders alone should have the final say in respect of when, to whom, and under what circumstances they make content available. Should the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India interfere with that right, both domestic and international breaches of law could result.

The full submission can be found here (pdf)

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