When file-sharing was in its infancy, most infringement took place via P2P software such as Kazaa or LimeWire. With their built-in search and download features they were an all-in-one solution, ripe for a full on legal attack.

In more recent times the web has played a much more important role in the distribution of copyright-infringing material, via torrent or streaming sites, for example. However, the rise of social media presents a new threat, with huge numbers of people now accessing copyrighted content via Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms.

The social media problem is considered to be particularly problematic in Russia, with users sharing full movies, TV shows and music, via platforms such as vKontakte, Russia’s Facebook. Such sites claim to be fully compliant with copyright law and do make efforts to reduce infringement with licensing deals and content recognition software. Nevertheless, if the Russian government has its way, the noose could tighten significantly in the future.

Social networking platforms currently enjoy the status of ‘information intermediary’ in Russia, a standing that puts them on a par with Internet service providers who can not generally be held liable for the infringing acts of their subscribers.

However, the Ministry of Culture believes that since much of the copyright infringement in Russia is now carried out via social networks, it will soon be necessary to strip them of their intermediary status. That would have the effect of rendering them jointly liable for infringement alongside their errant subscribers.

According to news outlet Izvestia, the relevant bill has already been drafted and, after gaining approval from the Ministry of Culture board, will be presented for public comment.

The basic premise is that when imposing liability on a social platform, courts must consider several factors. They include whether a platform should have been aware that content is infringing, whether any preventative measures were taken to mitigate infringement (filtering), whether timely steps to stop infringement were taken once the platform was made aware (takedowns), and whether or not profit was generated from illegal use (advertising).

“Despite the excuses, the technical ability to [prevent infringement] exists. Of course, this will require a lot of money, but if you want to use content you have to pay for it,” a content producer told Izvestia.

“Today, virtually all Internet traffic is comprised of audiovisual content, all supplied by content creators and often not paid for. Measures should be taken – such as those in the Ministry of Culture bill, and many others – to drive illegal content into the ‘ghetto’. Piracy is theft, and it must be fought.”

But while content producers and distributors believe there are simple solutions, others view the situation as more complex.

In common with complaints voiced by critics in the US and Europe, there are concerns that huge burdens will be placed on platform providers if they are required to conduct a full legal analysis of every file uploaded by their users. There are also worries that non-infringing content (such as public domain material) could get caught up in filtering systems.

Quite how these plans will play out is unclear, but it seems likely that social networks will put up a fight to ensure that whatever responsibilities are imposed on them allow room for development and innovation.

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

Nowadays, online pirates have many options to download movies, TV-shows or other infringing content.

Streaming sites have become more popular in recent years; there are dedicated set-top boxes, direct download portals, or good old torrent sites.

The latter category dominated the piracy scene since the mid-2000s, up until a few years ago. But even today, sites such as The Pirate Bay and ExtraTorrent continue to draw millions of users per day.

But where are these pirates coming from?

In absolute numbers, the United States, Russia and India clearly come out on top. All three are good for roughly three billion torrent site visits per year, mostly due to their large Internet populations. However, when we look at the average number of visits per Internet user a different pattern emerges.

Data exclusively shared with TorrentFreak by market analytics company MUSO shows that in this relative comparison, the United States, Russia and India move to the 69th, 26th and 88th place respectively, while European countries make up most of the top ten.

Latvia, Bulgaria, and Estonia make up the top three, each with more than 50 torrent site visits per Internet user throughout 2016.

Israel is the first non-European country in tenth place. Interestingly, Italy and the United Kingdom are relatively far down, in 46th and 45th place, which may in part be due to widespread site-blocking by ISPs in these countries.

To clarify, a “visit” in this case, means that someone accessed a website and viewed one or more pages. After 30 minutes of inactivity, additional pageviews on the same site are counted as an additional visit.

The data MUSO used to compile the “torrent piracy demand rank” covers over 4,500 of the highest traffic torrent sites in 2016. This includes both international and regionally popular piracy sites.

That torrent sites are relatively popular in Europe doesn’t come as a complete surprise. MUSO previously released data revealing that overall piracy rates are very high there as well. The United States, United Kingdom, and Italy were ranked higher than in the torrent list below, suggesting that other forms of piracy are more popular in these countries.

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Below is the top 100. China, Japan, and Korea were excluded from the analysis as the domain coverage wasn’t optimal and countries with an Internet population of fewer than one million people were left out as well.

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

Last year, media conglomerate ABS-CBN took the popular pirate streaming site FMovies to court in the United States.

FMovies is one of several streaming sites that has grown explosively over the past year. It offers tens of thousands of mainstream movies and TV-shows to an audience of millions of people.

In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the media company branded FMovies as a classic pirate site, offering unauthorized streams of content they own.

“Defendant’s website is a classic example of a pirate operation, having no regard whatsoever for the rights of ABS-CBN and willfully infringing ABS-CBN’s intellectual property,” the company’s lawyers wrote.

Despite the strong allegations, several months have passed without any response from FMovies in court. As a result, the copyright holder decided to move ahead and file for a default judgment.

In its motion, the company repeats many of the allegations, accusing FMovies of trademark infringement, unfair competition, plus direct and contributory trademark infringement.

“Defendants provide links on their website to instant streams which perform ABS-CBN’s Copyrighted Works. CBN’s copyrighted movies, Defendants’ website then streams and performs the full-length version of the video,” they explain to the court (pdf).

According to the Philippine media conglomerate, FMovies’ operators used its trademarks and copyrighted works to draw in more visitors, generating profit through a boost in advertising impressions.

Fmovies.to/se

In its request ABS-CBN lists seven copyrighted works, asking for the maximum amount of damages for non-willful copyright infringement. No damages were requested for patent infringement or any other offenses.

“ABS-CBN requests the Court award it $30,000 per infringed work, for a total award amount of $210,000 against Defendants. The requested amount is the highest for non-willful infringement, despite Defendants’ default on allegations of willfulness,” they write.

The media company further asks for a permanent injunction to stop FMovies’ operators from distributing their work and use their trademarks. Additionally, they request an order to sign the FMovies.to domain over to ABS, or for the domain registry to make it inaccessible.

While the proposed damages are not insignificant, they are lower than we’ve seen in similar cases, which raises questions.

Three years ago ABS-CBN itself launched a case against a much smaller streaming site operated by a man from Oregan, who created it for his Filipino wife. While his site only had a fraction of the users FMovies has, the damages amounted to $10 million at the time.

So why request ‘only’ $210,000 here where it could easily be several million? Especially considering the fact that it’s a default judgment where the burden of proof is low.

Finally, it’s worth noting that ABS-CBN titles that were previously available on FMovies are now gone. Many titles that are absent in the lawsuit are also not available on the site either. Perhaps there’s more to this than meets the eye, but without hard evidence it’s best not to speculate too much.

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

While regular members of the public are free to grab a McDonalds in old sportswear or visit a store without full makeup, the mere suggestion of such sloppy behavior has the potential to make an A-List celebrity sweat like a PwC accountant at the Oscars.

Indeed, for people like Kanye West or Kim Kardashian, getting mistaken in public for a drunken bum could have catastrophic financial consequences. If annoying members of the public record and then upload such footage to the Internet, sponsors could back away, horrified at how regular they look without Photoshop.

But for those needing to maintain a perfect public image at all times, both in public and on YouTube, all is not lost. A new app being trialed in the US aims to stop interfering ‘citizen journalists’ in their tracks, rendering embarrassing celebrity footage all but useless.

Under development for iOS and Android, the app is made up of two modules. The first is a tool that downloads the most popular pop track of the week (currently Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape of You’) from one of many pirate sites.

The second is a clever piece of coding that allows the track to be played extremely loudly through the phone’s own speaker, but with a novel twist.

Whenever Kim needs to go out without her hair done, all she needs to do is pop her phone in her pocket and activate the app. The software then transposes the pirate audio to surpass 15 kHz, beyond the normal range of human hearing but within reach of recording equipment utilized by the public.

It’s at this stage the app comes into its own. As soon as the potentially embarrassing footage is recorded and uploaded to YouTube, the site’s recently upgraded Content ID system swings into action.

Completely unfazed by the massive shift in pitch, YouTube’s filtering system spots the pirate song playing in the background and flags the video as a copyright infringement. Thanks to a less tolerant approach to infringers, it’s immediately taken off the site, keeping the celebrity’s image intact.

At the moment the app is being trialed by a few hand-picked public figures who are said to be particularly image-conscious. Their feedback has been largely positive, with a number asking for specific enhancements.

One nameless politician, who has been caught on camera a number of times saying inappropriate things about women, inquired whether the app could be upgraded to play a quickly medley of three or four songs instead of just one. This would ensure that people lose their YouTube account under the site’s tightened three-strike rule. Take that.

Looking towards the possibility of a future takedown/staydown regime, another tester suggested that rather than culling pirate tracks from the Internet, the app could play a unique sequence of notes previously copyrighted by the celebrity.

Once that ‘tune’ has been registered with YouTube’s Content ID, it would be trivial for the public figure to have the app rolling on his or her phone all the time. This would enable them to be excluded from YouTube on a permanent basis, perfect for the politician who likes to act with impunity.

A video of the app in action can be found here.

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

Founded in 2008, torrent search engine Bitsnoop was one of the fastest growing torrent sites at the beginning of the decade.

When the site first came online it indexed roughly a million torrents, and it continued to expand in the years that followed.

Earlier this week the site still served a healthy 23,862,834 torrents, but a few hours ago it stopped. According to a message posted on the site’s homepage, Bitsnoop decided to shut down.

“It’s been a nice ride, but all things eventually come to an end,” the message reads.

TorrentFreak contacted the operator of the site to find out more, but he preferred not to comment. On the site we read, however, that not all of the site’s content has been lost for good.

Bitsnoop has shared its data with their friends at fellow torrent search engine Zooqle, who may add it to their database later on.

“For now check out Zooqle – these guys seem to know their stuff. They took our data and said they will index it eventually,” Bitsnoop’s operator writes.

Bitsnoop’s farewell

With Bitsnoop’s shutdown the torrent community loses another familiar name. Over the years the site has been featured in our top ten of most-visited torrent sites a few times, but in recent years traffic dropped.

Like many other sites, BitSnoop is blocked by ISPs in several countries including the UK and Italy, and it was close to being blocked in Australia as well.

As for Zooqle, this site is a relative newcomer. It first appeared online last year and had been steadily expanding since, thanks to traffic from other sites including meta-search engine Torrentz2.

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Note: The “farewell” message was first posted on March 31, which is close to April 1st, but we couldn’t see any hints suggesting that it’s a prank.

Zooqle

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