Still undecided about the future of the DMCA law, the U.S. Government’s Copyright Office extended its public consultation to evaluate the effectiveness of the Safe Harbor provisions.

The study aims to signal problems with the current takedown procedures and addresses ISPs’ repeat infringer policies, copyright takedown abuses, and the ever-increasing volume of DMCA notices.

Together with various rightsholders and Internet services, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) also submitted its recommendations this week. The digital rights group believes that the current law works as it should, and warns against a copyright enforcement expansion.

The Internet provides a crucial role in facilitating freedom of expression, something that shouldn’t be limited by far-reaching anti-piracy measures, the organization argues.

“Internet intermediaries provide the backbone for Internet users’ expression and are key to the public’s ability to exercise these rights,” EFF writes in its submission.

“Accordingly, the public has a strong interest in ensuring that the Internet remains a viable and accessible platform for free expression and innovation, and in ensuring that online platforms don’t unduly remove, filter, or block speech from the Internet.”

One of the areas of interest for the Copyright Office is how to deal with repeat infringers. The DMCA law requires Internet providers to have a repeat infringer policy in place, but stakeholders have different views on what these should look like.

According to the EFF, however, terminating people’s Internet access is much more than a slap on the wrist, as it can severely impede people’s ability to function in today’s society.

“Conduit ISPs serve as the bridge between their subscribers and the entire Internet. Terminating a subscriber’s Internet access account imposes a far more significant penalty that merely cutting off access to a single Internet service.”

Nowadays, terminating an Internet account often means that the entire household will be affected. The EFF warns that as a result, many people will lose access to important information and tools, which are needed for school, jobs, and even government services.

“Indeed, as former President Obama stated, Internet access today is ‘not a luxury, it’s a necessity’,” the EFF adds.

Another question posted by the Copyright Office deals with the necessity for anti-piracy filters. Yesterday, the RIAA and other music groups spoke out in favor of automated filters but the EFF fiercely opposes the idea.

One of the problems the group signals is that filtering will require Internet services to monitor their users’ activity, causing privacy concerns. In addition these filters will also be imprecise, targeting content that’s considered fair use, for example.

Finally, automated filters will require Internet services to police the Internet, which can be quite costly and stifle free speech at the same time.

“…by shifting the burden and cost of enforcement away from copyright holders and onto service providers, these proposals would stifle competition for Internet services, exacerbate current problems with the notice and takedown system, and increase the risk that valuable, lawful speech will be silenced,” the EFF writes.

The same free speech argument also applies to site-blocking initiatives. According to the EFF, such blocking efforts also restrict access to legitimate material. At the same time, the measures are far from effective.

“Site-blocking often has broader impacts on lawful online speech than intended. When entire domains are blocked, every other page hosted by those domains are subject to the block, regardless of whether they contain infringing content.

“Site-blocking is also largely ineffective at stemming online copyright infringement. Many sites are able to relaunch at new URLs, and users are often able to circumvent blocks using VPNs and the Tor browser,” the group adds.

In summary, the EFF concludes that overall the current law works pretty well and the group warns the Copyright Office not to give in to the broad “filter-everything” push from major copyright industry groups.

—

The EFF’s full submission to the U.S. Copyright office is available here (pdf).

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

For more than a decade copyright holders have been monitoring unauthorized downloads.

Traditionally this have resulted in harmless takedown notices but increasingly, these warnings are being turned into settlement demands or automated fines.

Rightsholders in the Netherlands are planning similar action, and this week it appeared that the first mass-campaign had gone live. Yesterday, several people received a letter in the mail which accused them of illegal downloading.

The letters in question were sent in the name of local distributer Dutch Filmworks and each quotes a standard fine of 150 euros per download. Adding in a classic conversion trick, those who pay within eights days only have to cough up €52.74.

The letters look pretty legitimate, especially to people who are unfamiliar with these type of demands. However, the fact that several crucial details are missing, including an IP-address and the name of the pirated movie, should set off alarm bells.

And indeed, after several people reported the apparent scam, Dutch Filmworks confirmed that they have nothing to do with these fines. To avoid any confusion, the movie distributer quickly placed a prominent warning on its website, advising recipients to trash the letters.

“There is a fake letter in circulation. This letter is NOT sent by Dutch Filmworks. Do not pay and throw the letter away,” the movie distributer warns.

While the letters look real enough to fool some people, the first mass warnings (with or without fines) have yet to be sent in the Netherlands.

When the process happens for real, things might not go as smoothly as copyright holders would like as several Internet providers are refusing to cooperate. Last month, leading Dutch Internet provider Ziggo said it had refused to voluntarily participate in the plan of local anti-piracy group BREIN, who want to send out mass warnings to pirates.

“As an ISP we are a neutral access provider. This does not include the role of active enforcement of rights or interests of third parties, including BREIN,” a company spokesperson said.

Also, if rightsholders want to obtain the personal details of alleged downloaders they will have to go to court first, which hasn’t happened thus far. Until then, it is safe to throw all unsubstantiated piracy letters in the trash.

Fake piracy fines are by no means a new phenomenon. Last year many U.S. Internet subscribers were targeted in a similar scam. In this case, the scammers used the name of a known piracy tracking outfit and rightsholders such as Lionsgate, to send fake DMCA notices and settlement demands to ISPs.

—-

A copy of the fake letter, pictured below, was posted by Tweakers.

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

Following a case brought by Roadshow Films, Foxtel, Disney, Paramount, Columbia, and 20th Century Fox, last December more than fifty Internet service providers Down Under were ordered to start barring subscriber access to ‘pirate’ sites.

At the Federal Court, Justice John Nicholas ruled that The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, TorrentHound, IsoHunt and streaming service SolarMovie would all have to be rendered inaccessible to consumers in Australia. Included in the order were dozens of proxy and mirror sites.

After working so hard to have site-blocking legislation passed, it was only a matter of time before rightsholders returned to have more sites blocked. It was therefore no surprise to hear that a new process was launched earlier today.

Backed by six movie studios, Village Roadshow is again in the driving seat, this time seeking to block dozens of ‘pirate’ sites. ComputerWorld reports that there are 41 sites targeted although a couple of domains in the list relate to the same core site.

Many popular torrent sites are in the spotlight including ExtraTorrent, RarBG, Demonoid, LimeTorrents, Torrent Downloads, TorrentProject, YTS and EZTV.

Streaming portals 123Movies, CouchTuner, Icefilms, Movie4K, PrimeWire, Viooz, Putlocker, WatchFree and WatchSeries are also listed alongside direct download sites RlsBB and TehParadox. The complaint also targets several proxy and mirror sites.

In its application, Roadshow requests that ISPs Telstra, Optus, Vocus, TPG, (and their subsidiaries) block the sites using the template established in the earlier Pirate Bay case. If the movie company wants additional proxy and mirror sites blocked in future, it will need to file an affidavit with the court.

The full list of sites, courtesy of Computerworld, reads as follows:

• 123Movies
• Alluc
• Bitsnoop
• Couchtuner
• Demonoid
• Extra.to
• ExtraTorrent.cc
• EYNY
• EZTV
• FMovies
• GenVideos
• Hdmovieswatch
• Icefilms
• Kinogo
• KissCartoon
• Limetorrents
• MegaShare
• Movie4k
• Phimmoi
• Piratebay.to
• PrimeWire
• Putlocker.ch
• Putlocker.plus
• Putlocker.run
• Putlockers.vip
• Rarbg
• RIsbb
• Shush
• Softarchive
• Spacemov
• Tehparadox
• Torrent Downloads
• TorrentProject
• Viooz
• WatchFree
• WatchSeries
• Xemphimso
• Xmovies8.org
• XMovies8.tv
• Yify Torrent
• YTS

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

Following a Digital Economy Bill committee earlier this month, it was revealed that copyright holders and search engines were close to finalizing a voluntary anti-piracy code. This Monday, it became reality.

Under this agreement, search engines will optimize their algorithms to demote pirated content in search results, with the aim of making infringing content less visible and legal content more so. The system is due to begin in earnest during early summer but what if it doesn’t do its job?

That eventuality has been discussed as part of the negotiations surrounding the Digital Economy Bill, with some lawmakers supporting an amendment which would give the Secretary of State the power to force Google and other search engines to tackle piracy, if the voluntary route fails.

To the relief of Google and the disappointment of rightsholders, this week the amendment was withdrawn but those in favor of the legislation didn’t go quietly. Lord Stevenson of Balmacara was particularly vocal after reading out a portion of the code (shown below) relating to the demoting of sites that receive large numbers of DMCA-style notices.

[T]o more effectively use such notices to demote domains demonstrated to be dedicated to infringement, and to work collaboratively with rights holders to consider other technically reasonable, scalable avenues empirically demonstrated to help materially reduce the appearance of illegitimate sites in the top search rankings

“I could read that again, because you would probably need to hear it again to have the faintest idea what we are talking about,” he said.

“I fear that it smacks of either a lowest common denominator approach or some hard arm-wrestling in the corridors where the discussion took place to get something that looks reasonable on paper.

“It does not smack of a real commitment to scourge out the terrible way in which search engines have referred people who should have known better to material that was not cleared for copyright and should not have been made available to them through that route.”

While Lord Stevenson clearly wasn’t happy, he did reveal some more information on how the code will be managed.

The Minister of State for Intellectual Property will oversee its implementation, supported by quarterly meetings of all parties involved. The Minister will also “set requirements for reporting by search engines and rights holders on any matter herein, including in particular those matters where the Code of Practice calls for ongoing discussion.”

Then, after a year of operation, the effectiveness of the code will be reviewed to ensure “continuing progress towards achieving the Shared Objectives.”

What those objectives are will remain a mystery, however. In response to Lord Stevenson’s request to see a copy of the code, Baroness Buscombe said that wouldn’t be possible.

“We do not plan to publish the code in full because details about the number of copyright infringement reports a site can receive before it is demoted might allow pirates to game the system. We are, however, very happy to share the commitments in the code in more general terms,” she said.

Baroness Buscombe went on to ask for the amendment to be dropped and that was followed by a spirited response from Lord Stevenson.

“I cannot see this agreement lasting and believe that there will have to be a backstop power at some stage,” he said.

“At the moment, it is a ‘large copyright holders against large search engines’ agreement, and on that level it might operate. I do not think it will be effective. I do not think it is sustainable because there will be new people coming in and business models and practices will change — we cannot foresee that.”

And with that the amendment was withdrawn and with it any chance of forcing search engines into compliance by law for the foreseeable future. Only time will tell how things will play out but as the wording of the paragraph cited by Lord Stevenson shows, there is plenty of room for manoever.

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

Perfect copies of movies still in theaters are relatively hard to come by, unless you know someone with access to DVD screeners, that is.

These discs are often given out to awards voters “for their consideration” and are supposed to be handled extremely securely so that they don’t fall into the wrong hands.

Nevertheless, every year screeners end up on torrent sites, much to the disappointment of movie companies.

Two titles that leaked back in 2015 were Creed and In the Heart of the Sea but their route to the Internet was a particularly unusual one. After obtaining the discs legally on behalf of its clients, talent agency Innovative Artists used ripping software to copy the movies to its own digital distribution platform.

Quite clearly its security was lacking, as notorious pirate group Hive-CM8 obtained copies of the movies and dumped them online. Both were watermarked, however, which allowed content security company Deluxe Entertainment Services to trace the copies back to Innovative Artists.

In response, Warner Bros. filed a lawsuit against the company last October. Warner pulled no punches, accusing Innovative Artists of using illegal software to circumvent the protection on the discs before placing them on an illegal distribution platform.

The agency publicly apologized for its actions but added that it was surprised by the lawsuit. It had cooperated with Warner right from the beginning in an effort to put things right, so the legal action came out of the blue.

Now, however, the dispute appears to be have been sorted out. According to information received by THR, Warner Bros. and Innovative Artists have come to some kind of settlement agreement.

No court documents have yet been filed to indicate that a settlement has been reached. That being said, it’s rare for such agreements to be made fully public so any terms could remain confidential, even when the notice of dismissal appears. THR says it contacted both parties for comment but neither side provided any information.

Meanwhile, Hive-CM8 have continued releasing copies of leaked DVD screeners over the past several weeks, showing that when one route of supply closes, another one opens.

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