Cloudflare has taken quite a bit of heat from copyright holders in recent months.

As one of the leading CDN and DDoS protection services, Cloudflare is used by millions of websites across the globe, some of which are notorious pirate sites.

However, instead of proactively taking down these sites, Cloudflare maintains its position as a neutral service provider. If copyright holders want them to take action, they have to follow the legal process.

This is the route adult company Flava Works is taking now. The company went to a clerk at the Illinois federal court and succesfully obtained a DMCA subpoena to expose the personal details connected to the account of the gay torrent community Gay-Torrents.org.

The order commands CloudFlare to hand over the personal details of the associated account holder within a month. This includes names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, account numbers, billing records and other identifying information.

Unlike regular subpoenas, DMCA subpoenas are not reviewed by a judge and only require a signature from the court clerk. However, in a letter sent to Cloudflare, Flava Works says that it’s considering further legal steps, if they’re needed.

The DMCA subpoena

The adult company explains that it sent three DMCA takedown notices to the company, but that dozens of copyright infringing files on Gay-Torrents.org are still being served through Cloudflare’s servers.

Flava argued that Cloudflare is required to take proper action against repeat infringers under the DMCA, and wants it to terminate the associated account in its entirety, or face lagal action.

“Accordingly, demand is hereby made upon you to immediately and permanently disable and remove the Infringing Site as a repeat infringer and terminate all related accounts,” Flava writes in its letter.

“Absent full compliance with this demand, our Client will be forced to investigate all legal remedies available to it, including, without limitation, bringing a civil cause of action against you to compel compliance.”

The adult entertainment company ends by saying that it would be in the best interests of all parties to avoid costly litigation, but clearly doesn’t rule out the possibility.

It’s doubtful, however, that Cloudflare will be sensitive to this kind of threat. The company has repeatedly said that it follows the letter of the law, and in its opinion this doesn’t cover the termination of clients solely based on third party claims.

TorrentFreak reached out to Cloudflare for a comment on the allegations. The company informed us that they have yet to be served with the subpoena, adding that it is Cloudflare’s policy to respond to proper court process once served.

To be continued.

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

Founded more than five years ago, Swefilmer grew to become Sweden’s most popular movie and TV show streaming site. It was once said to have accounted for 25% of all web TV viewing in Sweden.

In 2015, a 22-year-old Swefilmer operator revealed he’d been raided and in 2016 a Turkish national was arrested in Germany on a secret European arrest warrant. The now 26-year-old was accused of receiving donations from users and setting up Swefilmer’s deals with advertisers.

The pair appeared at the Varberg District Court in January, accused of making more than $1.5m from their activities between November 2013 and June 2015.

After a few weeks’ suspension, the case got back underway this month, when details of the investigation into the site were revealed to the Court.

This week the trial concluded with prosecutor Anna Ginner describing the Swefilmer streaming operation as being like “organized crime”, while demanding a 4.5-year prison sentence for the 26-year-old alongside damages of more than $1.5m.

“I say this bears the traits of organized crime. A crime that has drawn in a lot of big money,” said Ginner via video link.

“The aim was to provide all visitors of the website Swefilmer an opportunity to see movies for free. The website even placed advertising to encourage more visitors,” she said.

“The effect of the business has been that thousands of users have done just that, instead of paying for the Swedish film companies. This has damaged the film studios.”

According to local media, the 26-year-old’s lawyer dismissed the prosecution’s claims as “fantasy”, noting that it’s not clear that his client committed any crimes at all.

That assertion wasn’t shared by lawyer Henrik Pontén of RightsAlliance.

“We must not forget that it is only a small part of the money that we have been able to find. There is a large amount of money that has been lost somewhere in the world,” Pontén said.

The prosecution considers the 26-year-old to be the main player behind the site, with the 22-year-old playing a much smaller role. He stands accused of receiving around $4,000 of the proceeds but according to his lawyer Claes Kennedy, no crime was committed, since at the time it had not been established by the EU court that linking to pirated content was illegal.

Nevertheless, the prosecution wants the site’s former administrator to receive a year in jail but may settle for a suspended sentence plus community service, a point on which his lawyer agrees.

For his part, Henrik Pontén hopes the punishments are closer to the top of the scale as a deterrent to others.

“Foreign criminals are attracted to Sweden for the opportunity to earn serious money and receive low penalty rates,” he told Hallands Nyheter.

The district court’s decision is due mid-May.

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

The Kodi media player software has seen a massive surge in popularity over the past two years.

With help from a wide range of third-party add-ons, some of which offer access to pirated content, millions of people now use Kodi as their main source of entertainment.

Earlier this month we interviewed the Kodi team to talk about their plans and piracy-related challenges. They were very upfront about these issues and happy to provide some counterbalance to often misleading news reports.

The Kodi team itself sees no value in actively banning third-party addons. Instead, they would like more legitimate content providers to join their platform. One of the things that could make this easier is by allowing Kodi to interface with DRM.

DRM-compatibility would make it possible for major movie studios and the likes of Netflix to stream their content in a protected environment, which is a minimal requirement for many.

However, the words “Kodi” and “DRM” in one sentence proved to be a rather volatile mix.

Soon after we posted our article, wild theories started to emerge, and social media, YouTube, and other news outlets started to spread inaccurate claims, with some predicting the end of Kodi.

This week the Kodi team decided to clarify their stance. Responding to the “ill-informed idiots on YouTube” and click-bait writers, the team makes it clear that DRM poses no threat to the media player software that people have come to love.

“Let’s try again and make this crystal clear: Kodi is a free, open-source neutral software. Kodi will never, ever require DRM to work, nor will it ever be a locked software. Ever! Read that a couple more times for good measure,” they write.

Since Kodi is open source, released under a GNU General Public License, the software itself can’t ship with DRM. However, there might be ways to set it up so it is compatible with DRM software that’s already on users’ systems or devices.

This will help to bring content providers on board and change the perception of Kodi as a piracy facilitator, the team says.

“From our perspective, supporting low-level DRM is a first step to changing that. Basically, what this means is providing some sort of interface to work with the DRM already present on your system.

“For example, Android ships with software that plays back DRMed content from Netflix. Kodi could hook into this already existing software in Android to playback the same content, so you never have to leave Kodi,” they add.

In other words, the only thing that Kodi is trying to do is help content providers to embrace the platform, not to hunt down or limit the availability of third party add-ons.

To the many news outlets who spread inaccuracies or falsehoods, the developers say they are always happy to answer their questions. In any case, readers are warned not to fall for wild claims, as they are often incorrect.

As for DRM, the Kodi team said its formal position can be summarized with the following four sentences.

– Kodi will never provide content, DRMed or not.
– Kodi will never stop working with your content.
– We will never prevent you from using Kodi as you so choose.
– We do not condone, condemn, encourage or recommend any particular use of Kodi.

Period.

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

Unlike in the United States where so-called safe harbor provisions apply to Internet service providers and online platforms such as Google and Facebook, Australia’s system offers reduced protection for the latter group.

To put the country on a similar footing as other technologically advanced nations, amendments were proposed to Australia’s Copyright Act that would’ve seen enhanced safe harbor assurances for platforms including search engines and social networks.

Last month, however, the government dropped the amendments before they were due to be introduced to parliament. That came as a surprise, particularly as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had given the proposals his approval just a week earlier.

While business startup advocates were disappointed by the move, copyright holders welcomed the decision, with Dan Rosen, chief executive of the Australian Recording Industry Association, calling for a “full, independent and evidence-based review” in advance of similar future proposals. Just a month later and that seems a likely outcome.

In a statement delivered by Minister for Communications Mitch Fifield, the government has now announced a further consultation on extending the safe harbor provisions of the Copyright Act.

“An expanded safe harbor regime would provide a useful mechanism for rights holders to have material that infringes their copyright removed from online service providers,” Fifield said.

“An expanded regime would also ensure that service providers are not held responsible for the infringing actions of their users, provided they take reasonable steps to take down material that infringes copyright.”

The minister said that the government intends to “proceed carefully” to ensure that any legislation achieves the above objectives while balancing the need to grow Australia’s digital economy and supporting the needs of creators and copyright holders.

The Department of Communications will now oversee a series of meetings and roundtable discussions with stakeholders, prior to delivering advice to the government by early June 2017.

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

Soon after Megaupload’s shutdown more than five years ago, many of the site’s users complained that their personal files had been lost as collateral damage.

One of these 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.

But, after Megaupload’s servers were raided Mr. Goodwin could no longer access the files. Hoping to resolve the issue, he asked the court to assist him and others to retrieve their personal property.

Helped by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Williams Mullen law firm, and Stanford’s Hoover Institution, Mr. Goodwin filed over half a dozen requests since 2012 asking the court to find a workable solution for the return of his data. Thus far, however, this has been without success.

This week, his legal team brought the issue before the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, pointing out that the Government’s seizure of Megaupload and its apparent disregard for the rights of former users of the service continue to affect innocent bystanders.

After more than five years, they hope that the court will help to break the case open, so former users will be able to retrieve their personal files.

“Mr. Goodwin, and many others, used Megaupload to store legal files, and we’ve been asking the court for help since 2012. It’s deeply unfair for him to still be in limbo after all this time,” EFF’s Senior Staff Attorney Mitch Stoltz says.

“The legal system must step in and create a pathway for law-abiding users to get their data back.”

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.

The longer it takes the higher the risk is that data will be permanently lost, the legal team stresses. And at this moment it could still take many years before the criminal case reaches its conclusion.

“The seizure and continued denial of access also violates Mr. Goodwin’s constitutional rights. Under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, the government was obligated to execute the searches and seizures in a manner that reasonably protected the rights of third parties to access and retrieval,” the petition reads.

While the sports videographer is the only Megaupload user who’s fighting for his rights in court, there are many others who still hope to be reunited with their lost data. Last year a former Megaupload user contacted TorrentFreak in desperation, hoping to recover a personal photo that is very dear to him.

According to EFF, the Government can’t stand idly by in these cases. More and more users are hosting their personal data in the cloud and it’s important that their rights are taken into account.

“We’re likely to see even more cases like this as cloud computing becomes increasingly popular,” EFF’s Legal Director Corynne McSherry comments.

“If the government takes over your bank, it doesn’t get to keep the family jewels you stored in the vault. There’s a process for you to get your stuff back, and you have a right to the same protection for your data,” she adds.

In a few weeks we will know if the Appeals Court agrees, or if the waiting continues.

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