As recently reported, UK ISPs will soon partner up with the Get it Right From a Genuine Site campaign to send warning notices to users whose accounts have been used to share copyright content.

While the campaign is educational in both tone and aim, it is still likely to worry warning recipients, even though there are no immediate repercussions for being caught. With that in mind, ISPs are preparing to inform their users as to what the scheme is all about.

A couple of hours ago via its website, it appears that BT became the first ISP to officially announce the campaign’s arrival. Virgin Media has had a section bookmarked on its site for some time but currently there is no information available.

The other ISPs involved, TalkTalk and Sky, seem less prepared at this point, so well done to BT for going first. However, BT’s announcement has the potential to cause confusion, despite starting well.

“Peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing is the transfer of data from one person’s computer directly to multiple other computers without the use of an intermediate server. This is known as a file sharing network and is set up using peer-to-peer software on your computer (also known as a programme, application or client),” it reads.

From here, BT gets its apples and pears a bit mixed up.

“You may have heard of networks like Gnutella, Napster, Torrentz and ThePirateBay. If your computer is online and you make files available for sharing in a peer-to-peer network, other members within that network can download files from you without you noticing,” the ISP writes.

While Gnutella and Napster are indeed the names of peer-to-peer networks, both Torrentz and ThePirateBay are torrent index sites. What makes the situation even more confusing is that the Napster peer-to-peer service has been dead for 15 years and is now a legitimate content platform. That could make less well-informed Napster customers believe they’re paying for a product that could get them a warning notice.

The Gnutella network (on which the LimeWire operated) is technically alive but on continual life support, and Torrentz shut down last year so doesn’t even exist. And suggesting that people can download files from torrent users without them knowing is clearly a step too far.

That said, BT correctly gives The Pirate Bay a prominent position, since the vast majority (if not all) of the warning notices going out will target BitTorrent users. However, instead of telling users how BitTorrent sharing works, the ISP focuses on how old-fashioned and largely redundant applications offer content for download.

By default, peer-to-peer software applications search for and share content on your computer with others. Normally, peer-to-peer software usually runs as soon as you turn on your computer and continues to run in the background. Even if you disable sharing/uploading, copyrighted content in a “shared” folder on your computer it can still be seen by others using the same peer-to-peer network. Some peer-to-peer software can even reset your preferences to resume uploading.

While the above might have been true when KaZaA, LimeWire and Morpheus ruled the pirate seas way over a decade ago, this is not the way BitTorrent works at all. BitTorrent users are completely aware of what they’re sharing, because they have to obtain a torrent file first to get the content. BitTorrent software does not search users’ computers for content to share without their permission, users are in complete control.

In fact, the ‘shared folder’ applications referenced by BT are more or less antiques in today’s file-sharing landscape. Like VHS and cassette tapes, there are still people out there using ‘shared folder’ applications, but these people are not the focus of the GetitRight campaign. Giving them a prominent mention is confusing and makes little to no sense.

Things also get messy when BT ventures into the world of file-sharing protocols and clients.

There are many different file types (also called protocols) that are used for the file sharing, such as BitTorrent, Deluge, iLivid, and Tixati etc. Each Protocol will have its own client. Popular BitTorrent clients are Vuze, Transmission, Deluge, uTorrent, Tribler, Tixati, BitComet, Torch etc.

First off, the term ‘file types’ is not interchangeable with the term ‘protocol’. A file type is something like .doc, .mp3 or .avi. A protocol is the technical communications system a file-sharing client relies upon to share with other clients. While BitTorrent is indeed a file-sharing protocol, Deluge, iLivid and Tixati are either torrent clients or download managers, they are not file-sharing protocols at all.

All that being said, in the rest of the announcement BT does a good job of explaining how users are tracked by copyright holders and detailing when notices will be sent out. It also offers reassurance that users’ details have not been shared with copyright holders and that broadband services will not be affected as a result of receiving a warning.

Finally, BT also provides some new information which indicates that users will able to see what content they’re being accused of downloading by following a link in warning notices. BT customers will be required to login using their BTID and password which will get them access to the Get it Right Information Portal.

“Once you click through the link on the email you will land on a BT page which from where you can go through to the portal. BT only provides you a secure access to the Get It Right Information Portal so that your data is kept completely confidential,” the company concludes.

While there’s clearly no intent on BT’s behalf to mislead, its advisory (here) could be improved by the removal of several paragraphs and the editing of others.

Received a warning notice from any UK ISP? Contact TF in confidence here.

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

Every hour of the day dozens of anti-piracy outfits scour the web to find copyright-infringing content, which they then target with takedown notices.

At TorrentFreak we keep a close eye on the notices that are sent to Google search, through the Lumen database, and every now and then we see some unusual requests.

Most recently, we spotted several takedown notices that reference President Obama.

In some of these cases, it was pretty clear that someone had made a mistake. For example, when a few links related to Obama’s “State of the Union” speech were confused with a song from the band “State of the Union.”

As a result, several pages linking to copies or downloads of the President’s yearly address were deindexed by Google.

The wrong “State of the Union”

A broader trend, however, is record labels going after the President’s musical talents.

More specifically, the parodies produced by the popular YouTube channel “baracksdubs.” These videos, which have millions of views, are also on the ‘watchlists’ of anti-piracy groups.

The ‘cover’ of Justin Bieber’s Sorry, for example. Copies and links to this and other ‘dubbed’ tracks were targeted many times in recent takedown requests, with claims that they’re “allegedly infringing” Justin Bieber’s rights.

Barack Obama Singing Sorry…(original)

So have the associated record labels lost their sense of humor?

Since the original YouTube videos are still online, it’s unlikely that the labels are intentionally targeting these parodies. They are probably getting flagged by mistake based on keyword triggers.

Some of the links in question are from sites that often link to copyrighted content as well. Many index YouTube videos, allowing users to download them as MP3s. This makes it harder to spot these kinds of errors, especially when most of the takedown process is automated.

The “baracksdubs” people probably don’t mind the issue, as long as their videos remain online, but it shows that mistakes are easily made.

Oh. And for what it’s worth, the issue doesn’t apply exclusively to President Obama. President Elect Trump is getting the same treatment, so we can probably see plenty more of this in the future.

Trump too…

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

Founded half a decade ago, Swefilmer grew to become Sweden’s most popular movie and TV show streaming site. Together with Dreamfilm, another site operating in the same niche, Swefilmer is said to have accounted for 25% of all web TV viewing in Sweden.

In the summer of 2015, local man Ola Johansson revealed that he’d been raided by the police under suspicion of being involved in running the site. In March 2015, 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.

In a subsequent indictment filed at the Varberg District Court, the men were accused of copyright infringement offenses relating to the unlawful distribution of more than 1,400 movies. However, just hours after the trial got underway last June, it was suspended, when a lawyer for one of the men asked to wait for an important EU copyright case to run its course.

That case, between Dutch blog GeenStijl.nl and Playboy, had seen a Dutch court ask the EU Court of Justice to rule whether unauthorized links to copyrighted content could be seen as a ‘communication to the public’ under Article 3(1) of the Copyright Directive, and whether those links facilitated copyright infringement.

Last September, the European Court of Justice ruled that it is usually acceptable to link to copyrighted content without permission when people are not aware content is infringing and when they do so on a non-profit basis. In commercial cases, the rules are much more strict.

The Swefilmer site

In light of that ruling, the pair return to the Varberg District Court today, accused of making more than $1.5m from their activities between November 2013 and June 2015.

While Swedish prosecutions against sites such as The Pirate Bay have made global headlines, the case against Swefilmer is the first of its kind against a stream-links portal. Prosecutor Anna Ginner and Rights Alliance lawyer Henrik Pontén believe they have the evidence needed to take down the pair.

“Swefilmer is a typical example of how a piracy operation looks today: fully commercial, well organized and great efforts expended to conceal itself. This applies particularly to the principal of the site,” Pontén told IDG.

According to Ginner, the pair ran an extensive operation and generated revenues from a number of advertising companies. They did not act alone but the duo were the ones that were identified by, among other things, their IP addresses.

The 26-year-old, who was arrested in Germany, was allegedly the money man who dealt with the advertisers. In addition to copyright infringement offenses, he stands accused of money laundering.

According to IDG, he will plead not guilty. His lawyer gave no hints why but suggested the reasons will become evident during the trial.

The younger man, who previously self-identified as Ola Johansson, is accused of being the day-to-day operator of the site, which included uploading movies to other sites where Swefilmer linked. He is said to have received a modest sum for his work, around $3,800.

“I think what’s interesting for the Swedish court is that this case has such clear elements of organized crime compared to what we have seen before,” Anna Ginner concludes.

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

This week we have four newcomers in our chart.

The Girl on The Train is the most downloaded movie.

The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only. All the movies in the list are Web-DL/Webrip/HDRip/BDrip/DVDrip unless stated otherwise.

RSS feed for the weekly movie download chart.

This week’s most downloaded movies are:

Movie Rank	Rank last week	Movie name	IMDb Rating / Trailer
Most downloaded movies via torrents
1	(4)	The Girl on The Train	6.6 / trailer
2	(2)	The Accountant	7.6 / trailer
3	(…)	Patriots Day (DVDscr)	7.6 / trailer
4	(1)	Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (Subbed HDRip)	6.3 / trailer
5	(…)	Arrival (DVDscr)	8.3 / trailer
6	(6)	Doctor Strange (HDTS)	8.0 / trailer
7	(…)	La La Land (DVDscr)	8.8 / trailer
8	(…)	Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them	7.1 / trailer
9	(3)	Keeping Up with the Joneses	5.8 / trailer
10	(8)	Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (HDTS)	8.3 / trailer

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

Towards the end of the year, movie screeners are sent out to industry insiders who have to cast their votes for the Oscars and other awards.

Usually, quite a few of these films start to leak on various pirate sites around Christmas, but this year it remained surprisingly quiet.

In fact, it took until early January before the first pirated screener showed up, a copy of the Denzel Washington movie Fences.

While the slow start remains largely unexplained, it appears that at least some pirate groups have become a bit more cautious with their release strategies. The infamous Hive-CM8, which put out the lion’s share of screeners last year, said it would no longer release any films before their theatrical release, for example.

Cautious or not, this week the screener ball started to get rolling again when five DVD screeners appeared online. ‘Hidden Figures’ and ‘Patriots Day’ were the first two to become available, followed by ‘La La Land,’ ‘Moonlight’ and ‘Arrival’ this weekend.

The copies were released and distributed by various P2P pirate groups, not just a single source. The most popular Arrival copy is tagged by the unknown group “4rrived,” for example, and Hive-CM8 is also back in the game with screener copies of La La Land and Moonlight.

Arrival screener

A few weeks ago, Hive-CM8 said they were ready to release screeners and a few hours ago they uploaded their first copy of the year.

“Finally first quality release, we do think this is a hot title and we decided to share it with the public,” the group writes in the release note of La La Land.

While some people believe that the group already has access to additional disks, they are still in the market for more material. They hope that insiders with access to screeners are in a sharing mood.

“We are looking for the guys sitting at home with all the 30 discs and posting pictures all over the net, but not sharing with anyone. Not sure why you are hiding it can be done safe and secure, for private viewing only if requested. Just msg us if you need help, we dont bite.”

Pirates will certainly welcome all the activity, but it’s unlikely that we’ll see a leak-fest similar to last year. Not from Hive-CM8 at least, who say that they don’t plan to share everything they have with the public this year.

It will be interesting to see how many screeners will leak during the weeks to come. With five releases so far this year, the leaked screener count is still at an all time low for now.

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