In recent years so-called copyright trolls have been accused of various dubious schemes and actions, including intimidation and extortion.

Last month it became apparent that these concerns are not just one-sided complaints, when the U.S. Government launched a criminal case against two of Prenda Law’s principals.

This week, copyright trolling allegations are once again brought to the forefront. In a class action lawsuit filed in an Illinois federal court on behalf of accused pirates, a group of rightsholders, lawyers, and a torrent monitoring expert are accused taking part in an “extortion conspiracy.”

The case centers around Clear Skies Network (CSN) which brought several lawsuits against alleged downloaders of the movie “Good Kill.” As is common in these campaigns, the rightsholders work in tandem with lawyers and BitTorrent monitoring experts to make their case.

One of their targets was a 62-year-old woman, who has now decided to strike back, also on behalf of other defendants that are in the same position.

The complaint details how the woman was repeatedly threatened and intimidated with a possible $150,000 in statutory damages, asking her to settle for only a few thousand. It also mentions various other allegations including false statements.

In addition, the complaint notes that the defendants may have purposefully operated a honeypot where they themselves distributed the infringing movie before its theatrical release in the U.S.

“CSN and/or the German John Doe relies on ‘fake experts’ and/or honeypots or seeds its Motion Picture for the express purpose of being able to claim that it has ‘caught’ people downloading the copyrighted material,” it reads.

The monitored torrents and the various associated IP-addresses were used as the base evidence for copyright lawsuits throughout the country. According to the class action complaint, the rightsholders continuously relied on the same German monitoring outfit whose evidence is insufficient to prove infringement.

Instead of protecting copyrights, the accused downloaders believe that the entire practice is primarily meant to generate a steady income flow for the filmmakers and other parties involved in the conspiracy.

“CSN’s existence has little to do with the protection of a copyright, and is instead an entity formed for the primary purpose of income generation through exploitation of the court system,” the complaint states.

As such, they accuse the alleged conspiracy of using the copyright cases as an extortion mechanism.

“[The defendants] have been engaged in a conspiracy to monetize infringement whereby they use questionable means to entrap unsuspecting Illinois residents who have allegedly violated CSN’s copyrights, and then extort money from these individuals using threatening and misleading settlement and litigation tactics under the guise of the Copyright Act.”

For the 62-year-old woman, this led to physical and emotional distress, and through the class action suit, she hopes to set the record straight.

Together with other potential members of the class, who have been treated similarly, she accuses CSN, the lawyers and the German torrent monitoring outfit, of conspiracy to improperly prosecute copyright infringement.

As compensation for the alleged unlawful acts, including of theft by deception barratry and maintenance, they ask for actual monetary damages as well as punitive damages.

According to FCT’s ‘Sophisticated Jane Doe’, it is about time that the Northern Illinois District takes a close look at these practices, and she hopes that it will help to finally cure this “judicial plague.”

A full copy of the class action complaint is available here (pdf).

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

During 2016 it became clear that Ukrainian authorities were prepared to get a little more tough on local piracy. After resident sites appeared for several years on the “Notorious Markets” list published by the United States Trade Representative, something had to give.

In November, the first concrete signs became evident when FS.to, one of the country’s most popular pirate sites, was shut down by Ukraine’s cyber-crime police.

The raid, triggered by a complaint from the MPAA, saw 19 people arrested and around 60 servers seized. However, just a few days later an even bigger scalp was claimed.

Founded in 2009, EX.UA was Ukraine’s largest cyberlocker and one of the largest sites in the country, period. The site enjoyed millions of visitors every day, but it was all to come to an end. Citing legal problems on top of DDoS attacks and other sundry issues, the site’s owners said they were shutting down at the end of November 2016. That must have pleased the United States.

After some adjustment, the site extended its closure deadline to the end of the year, ostensibly to allow users to get control of their files before the shutdown. However, with the new year now firmly underway, it appears that the site had a surprise up its sleeve.

“The decision to terminate the activities of [EX.UA] has generated a lot of questions from users, including where they can now store their files,” the operators said in an announcement.

“During the existence of EX.UA, the service became a personal memory drive to many Ukrainian citizens. It stores personal archives, professional documents, and personal collections of files.”

In short, while EX.UA will now be consigned to history, the ability of its users to store files won’t be going away anytime soon. In fact, it appears things will be improved.

“We inform you that the EX.UA service will be restarted on the domain FEX.NET (the File EXchange Network). It has been implemented on a new technology platform that will provide additional ease of use,” the team explain.

Of particular interest is how the site’s operators have hardened the service. The platform (at FEX.NET) now features anonymous sharing of files of any format and file size. Each file will be given a security key which will initially grant access to a file for seven days, after which it will be deleted.

On top, the service will automatically convert uploaded media files for viewing and playback on various devices.

“This feature set is basic and will be expanded. Within two months [of launch], we will implement additional file-sharing features, including the launch of a permanent repository and streaming cloud,” the operators say.

For the paid user, prices appear to be modest. For the first 100,000 local customers, FEX is offering 1TB of storage for $1 per month.

“We live in the information age. Information is the key to the development of modern society,” the site’s operators say.

“The site will be fully protected and completely safe. We are determined to offer the world technology that is better and cheaper than that already in existence. We want to show that innovations are born here.”

While the closure of EX.UA will have been welcomed by rightsholders, the rise of FEX.NET is almost certainly not what they bargained for. Time will tell how things will play out but it certainly looks like mass file-sharing will continue, albeit anonymously and out of sight.

Finally, the owners of EX.UA say they are attempting to sell their old domain for $1m, with all proceeds going to a children’s charity. It’s not clear whether anyone has yet made a suitable offer.

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

^{If you enjoy this episode, consider becoming a patron and getting involved with the show. Check out Steal This Show’s Patreon campaign: support us and get all kinds of fantastic benefits!}

In this episode, we meet up with economist and piracy researcher Balázs Bodó to discuss underground pirate markets in Europe and Russia and the “Guerilla Open Access” projects of SciHub, LibGen and Ebooks Farm.

Balázs delves into the rich history and culture of pirate librarians, and we wonder if peer-to-peer sharing can stay relevant in the age of content over-abundance. Plus: does anyone actually download books any more?

Balázs Bodó currently works at the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam. Before moving to the Netherlands, he was deeply involved in the development of the Hungarian internet culture. He was also the project lead for Creative Commons Hungary.

—

Steal This Show aims to release bi-weekly episodes featuring insiders discussing copyright and file-sharing news. It complements our regular reporting by adding more room for opinion, commentary, and analysis.

The guests for our news discussions will vary, and we’ll aim to introduce voices from different backgrounds and persuasions. In addition to news, STS will also produce features interviewing some of the great innovators and minds.

Host: Jamie King

Guest: Balázs Bodó

Produced by Jamie King
Edited & Mixed by Riley Byrne
Original Music by David Triana
Web Production by Siraje Amarniss

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

Over the past decade, entertainment industry groups have lobbied hard for so-called graduated response systems, where alleged pirates are warned and in some cases fined.

France was one of the pioneers in this area with its three-strikes anti-piracy law, and similar policies have been implemented in countries such as Ireland, South Korea, New Zealand and the United States, among others.

One of the main goals of these policies is to lower overall piracy rates and ultimately increase revenues for rightsholders. The question is, though, whether the measures will reach this desired goal.

Thus far there has been very little research on the topic but a new study, published by Dr. Jordi McKenzie of Sydney’s Macquarie University, suggests that these “strikes” policies don’t boost box office revenues.

For his paper, published in the most recent issue of the journal ‘Information Economics and Policy,’ McKenzie looked at opening week and total box office revenues for 6,083 unique films released between 2005 and 2013.

Using a variety of statistical analyses, he then measured the impact of the graduated response systems and related policies in six countries. In addition, another ten countries were included as a control measure.

The overall conclusion based on thousands of data points is that these anti-piracy policies have no significant impact on box-office income.

“This study has considered whether this has proven true in six countries’ experiences in the context of theatrical film revenues. No consistent evidence is found that supports increased theatrical box office revenues in any of the markets,” the conclusion reads.

The researcher did apply several robustness checks. For example, he looked at possible effects for separate movie genres pirates could be more or less interested in, but none explained the findings.

“While various statistical explanations for this ‘no-result’ finding have been considered, none are consistent with increasing revenues, which suggests the explanation lies elsewhere.”

According to McKenzie, there could be several explanations why box office attendance wasn’t influenced. Pirates might simply be continuing their old habits because the catch rate is relatively low, or it’s possible that they’re taking measures to hide their piracy habits. Through VPNS or by switching to streaming or cyberlocker services which aren’t monitored, for example.

While the study is mostly interesting due to its lack of results, there was another finding that’s worth highlighting. As a “crude test,” McKenzie also researched the effect of the Megaupload shutdown, observing a small decrease in box office revenues.

“Evaluating across all control countries, all treatment countries, and all countries together, no evidence of an increase in box office is observed after this date. In fact, as observed by Peukert et al.(2015), there is actually slight evidence of a decline in box office revenues after this date,” the paper reads.

According to McKenzie, this suggests that pirates are quite sophisticated. If needed, they can easily move from one service to another, much like many of the torrent users who moved to other sites when KickassTorrents was taken down last summer.

Of course, the research also has its limitations. For one, it only looks at the impact on the movie industry, and box office revenues in particular. More research is needed to see if the effects are different elsewhere, but for now the effect of graduated response systems appear to be very limited.

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

Christmas 2015 was a somewhat epic time for pirates with a cascade of high-quality screener copies of movies leaking onto the Internet. But while that period went with a bang, 2016 went with a whimper.

Over the recent festive period, not one English language screener copy of a movie appeared online. Considering the banquet in the same period the previous year, that was quite a turnaround. While reasons are almost always tough to pinpoint, it’s likely that Hollywood has toughened up its security.

Nevertheless, it remains impossible to cover every angle, something that became evident during the past few hours when the first screener leak of 2017 hit the Internet. It’s Denzel Washington’s Fences, a film set in the 1950s about a former baseball player turned garbageman.

Fences enjoyed a Christmas Day release in the United States and currently has no ‘street date’ for DVD or Blu-ray. Last night, however, a copy ripped from a screener leaked online and rapidly spread. It was a P2P release, meaning that it was released onto peer-to-peer networks first, rather than a more structured ‘scene’ offering.

Fences screenshot

The quality of the release isn’t pristine like many of the screeners released last year, but downloaders are commenting that while HD would’ve been nice, the copy is perfectly watchable with decent audio. It weighs in at just over 2GB.

Another issue worthy of comment is the presence every now and again of a watermark with identifies this leak as coming from Paramount Studios. The mark states clearly that this is an awards screener so therefore should’ve never been leaked to the public.

The group to gain the most traction early on with the release are known as UnKnOwN. In search of more information, TorrentFreak caught up with Bob UnKnOwN and separately a group spokesman.

However, they both told us that at this time they prefer to remain tight-lipped, stating that they don’t want to brag about the group’s releases or make any additional comment, right now at least. There is some information in the group’s NFO file that leaves some room for excitement, however.

Noting that the source for this release was a person or group known only as “Mr. Miyagi”, UnKnOwN sign off with a tease of “More to come,” indicating that this screener leak probably won’t be the last.

The leak of Fences comes on the heels of an announcement late December by 2015’s most successful screener release group, Hive-CM8. Noting that it didn’t want to release content before it appeared in cinemas, the group hinted that January might be the month to watch.

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