Ho! Ho! Ho! Many happy returns and Merry Christmas to all our readers. It’s Christmas Day once again and it’s been a pretty eventful year in file-sharing and copyright.

While we wish things were different, there hasn’t been much positive news to report in 2016. There’s been the occasional ray of light here and there, but overall it’s been a cascade of negativity. Today, however, we promise not to spoil anyone’s Christmas lunch or well-deserved day off.

In fact, this morning we can confidently report that for at least the next 48 hours, no one will be fined, detained, arrested, extradited, or otherwise screwed around with by rightsholder groups and their affiliates. Instead, we have a rather crazy mystery to solve, one that we really hope you can help us solve.

On November 23, the movie Bad Santa 2 was released in the United States to a somewhat lukewarm reception. Despite the average reviews, it’s a Christmas movie so pirates were still looking for something seasonal to watch.

Three weeks ago a copy surfaced in Russia with local dubbing but this week pirates obliged with an English language edition of the Billy Bob Thornton movie. However, something embedded in one of the sundry copies left us both surprised and scratching our heads here at TF.

Within seconds of the movie starting and for the next couple of minutes, a giant watermark appears on screen. Filling the entire width of the print from border to border, the watermark then slowly makes its way up the screen until it disappears off the top.

Of course, watermarks are usually put in place to indicate some kind of ownership. Studios use visible and invisible watermarks on screener copies of movies to literally stamp their name on pre-release versions of movies. However, we have absolutely no idea why someone would put our site name on a cam copy of a movie.

TorrentFreak spoke with releasers and even a couple of site operators to find out who might be behind this little surprise but we’ve had no success getting to the bottom of the mystery. It’s certainly possible that the “Streetcams” reference at the start of the watermark could hold the secret, but we’ve had no success in identifying who or what could be behind that particular brand either.

The watermark eventually scrolls away but at the end of the movie it reappears, beginning its journey from the bottom of the screen to the top in all its glory.

From there, who knows where it goes but we are aware that the “streetcams” watermark has appeared elsewhere, although not with additional TorrentFreak branding. It’s more difficult to see when compared to Bad Santa 2, but here it is on a cam copy of the movie Shut In.

So with logs on the fire and gifts on the tree, can you help us solve this cam mystery?

Merry Christmas and other celebrations to all our readers

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

With millions of monthly views, Putlocker is the go-to video streaming site for many people.

Earlier this year the site mysteriously disappeared, but after several weeks it eventually made a comeback on a new domain, Putlockers.ch.

As one of the largest ‘pirate sites’ on the Internet, Putlocker is a thorn in the side of rightsholders, and this week the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) put it on its annual list of “notorious markets.” At least, that was the goal.

In reality, the U.S. Government listed an unrelated domain with a similar but different name; Putlocker.ch (no ‘s’ at the end).

“The operator of Putlocker is believed to be based in Vietnam and appears to be taking actions to evade enforcement measures,” the USTR writes in its overview.

“For example, in 2016 Putlocker hopped domains from the country code top-level domain of Iceland (.is) to Switzerland (.ch) and started using reverse proxy services to obscure the location of its hosting provider.”

That’s the wrong Putlocker domain…

TorrentFreak reached out to the owner of Putlocker.ch, a domain name that’s parked at SEDO and doesn’t link to any infringing content.

He explains that his company Marshall Domains LTD specializes in buying domains names which are monetized through type-in traffic. They buy all sorts of names, with worried.com being one of their latest additions.

Clearly, Putlocker.ch is a good choice when it comes to type-in traffic, as it even confused the Trade Representative enough to include it in his notorious markets review.

Unfortunately, this is not the only unusual domain in the ‘notorious market’ review. The USTR report also lists several domain names that are no longer operational. Yet, they are classified as some of the world’s worst piracy havens.

The Novamov.com domain for example, hasn’t been operational since January, almost a year. Instead, the site now redirects to Auroravid.to. Similarly, Divxstage.to, Videoweed.es and Movshare.net have been redirecting to other sites for months too.

And then there’s Nowdownload.ch, which has been parked for a while, serving no infringing content at all.

It almost seems like the USTR simply copied and pasted some of these URLs from last year’s report, without checking if they were still online. That wouldn’t be a surprise, as some of the other text is identical to last year as well.

Whatever the reason, it certainly is sloppy for a document which aims to urge foreign Governments to change their local laws.

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

On July 12, China’s State Copyright Administration and four other departments launched “Jian Wang 2016”, a program designed to crack down on Internet-based intellectual property infringement.

According to the government, JW2016 targeted the “unauthorized illegal spread” of film and television works, news and other digital literature in order to protect the rights and interests of rightsholders. The program also aimed to further regulate online music and cloud storage services.

The cloud storage impact was felt immediately, with many providers choosing to “voluntarily” close down in the face of government allegations of illegal activity. In October, one of the largest, Qihoo 360, said it would cease offering accounts to private citizens due to the service being used to spread pirated content and other “illegal information” which inflicted “huge harm on society”.

In a statement on the closure, the government said that Qihoo 360 will wipe all user data by February 2017, a move which reflects how much importance the “360 group of companies’ attach to the protection of copyright works.”

This week, China’s National Copyright Administration announced new successes achieved by JW2016 during a five-month period. According to the department, the authorities handled 514 cases of online copyright infringement between July and November. Fines equal to almost $467,000 were handed down.

Others received a harsher treatment. According to the government, a total of 290 websites said to have engaged in Internet piracy were shut down. None of the sites said to have been closed are named in China’s official announcement.

“The State Copyright Administration has also supervised four batches of a total of 31 cases of copyright infringement, granting subsidies to local cases of more than 1.5 million yuan ($216,000),” the Administration said.

“At home and abroad, Jian Wang 2016 has had a very good effect. The initial results of copyright management on the Internet has greatly improved the environment for copyright and laid good foundations for further action.”

While China says it’s making progress on the copyright enforcement front, that hasn’t stopped it from being criticized by the United States.

In this week’s “Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets”, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) mentioned China in connection with a number of sites offering either pirate or counterfeit content, including the little-known-in-the-West ‘Beevideo’.

“BeeVideo is an application that facilitates the viewing of allegedly infringing movies and television shows on smart TVs through set-top boxes, and on mobile devices,” the USTR said.

“The app is available through the BeeVideo.tv website portal. BeeVideo has been downloaded more than 12 million times and once downloaded allegedly provides unlimited unauthorized access to infringing content. The developer and operator of BeeVideo is allegedly based in China.”

The USTR also called out China over Nanjing Imperiosus, a company that allegedly provides domain name registration services to around 2,300 illegal pharmacies. In a comment Thursday, the EFF said that while there may be issues with the sites themselves, domain registrars don’t host any content.

“It’s true that domain names can sometimes point to content deemed unlawful, but so too, ironically, does the Notorious Markets List—as well as this blog post, for that matter,” the EFF said.

“Enforcing content laws against intermediaries who merely point to unlawful information is a never-ending and misdirected quest, in which freedom of expression is an inevitable casualty.”

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

So what have you downloaded lately?

If you’re using BitTorrent without a VPN, proxy or seedbox, there’s a good chance that the rest of the world can see without asking.

Several companies have made it their job to monitor and report files that are shared through torrent sites. This is also how tens of thousands of people end up getting warnings in their mailboxes from copyright holders, or worse.

The public nature of people’s sharing habits was highlighted a few years ago by Youhavedownloaded.com, which has since been closed since. However, a similar service that cropped up recently is perhaps even more scary.

‘I Know What You Download‘ monitors torrent traffic around the clock and makes everything public. This means that you can see what information they store on the IP-address you currently have.

The site currently has information on 460,000 torrents in its database plus 70 million unique IP-addresses captured during the last month alone. This makes it much larger than its predecessor.

If checking out your ‘own’ downloads isn’t enough, the site also helps people to check what others have shared. Just enter any IP-address in the search box and you’re good to go.

Below, for example, we have a list of recent downloads shared by a random Google Fiber customer in Provo, Utah.

Random Google fiber user

In addition, the site offers a nifty spy tool where you can see what your friends are downloading, without knowing their IP-address. If someone clicks on a link you send them, their alleged download history shows up immediately, without the IP-address being exposed.

TorrentFreak got in touch with the people behind the site to find out more about this monitoring and spying service. The company informed us that the site helps to showcase their abilities to the various outfits they work with, including copyright holders.

“We’ve set up the site for promotional purposes and as a demonstration of our capabilities,” Marketing director Andrey Rogov says.

“We are engaged in the distribution of information relating to torrent downloading activity to rightsholders, advertising platforms, law-enforcement and international organizations.”

The company offers API access to its data for interested parties and can also provide TCP dumps as extra proof that downloaded content is linked to a certain IP-address.

Of course, not everyone likes to see their information exposed on the site, especially if they haven’t downloaded content themselves. However, Rogov says that they generally don’t respond to removal requests from the public.

They do, in some cases, help individuals to remove their own content from public view if it’s being shared without permission. And they also assist organizations to understand how their network is used to pirate content.

“For example, we received a letter from a girl whose sexually explicit video had appeared on the Internet and had been widely spread over torrents sites. We helped her to remove public access to this content.

“We also respond to inquiries from some organizations. For example, Northeastern University asked us about torrent downloads from their IP-addresses,” Rogov explains.

For the public at large, however, the site should mainly be a reminder of how public BitTorrent is, and that everything you share is open for others to see.

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Notes: As with all monitoring tools, the service probably isn’t always 100% accurate. For those who have dynamic IP-addresses the service might also show content that someone else has downloaded. VPN users will also notice a long list of downloads that are not theirs.

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

Every year the United States Trade Representative calls on foreign countries to take action against a broad range of websites which are allegedly involved in copyright infringement. Perhaps understandably, The Pirate Bay is one of the most obvious platforms to appear in the USTR’s review but there are others that don’t fit the same profile.

One of those is Russian social networking giant vKontakte (VK). Like all platforms with millions of users contributing content on a daily basis, VK has to deal with allegations of copyright infringement. Traditionally, the most vocal critics have hailed from the music industry but in recent times VK has made its peace with several distributors via licensing deals.

But despite these efforts, VK is apparently still falling short of the standards set by the United States government. In its yearly “Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets” report published this week, the United States Trade Representative laid out the case against VK.

“Nominated again this year, VK is one of the most popular sites in the world and continues to operate as an extremely popular social networking site in Russia and neighboring countries. VK reportedly facilitates the distribution of copyright-infringing files,” the USTR wrote.

Noting the commercial and cultural value of social networking platforms that go about their business without infringing rightsholders’ copyrights, the USTR said that VK’s recent steps to tackle piracy were “encouraging”.

VK has reached deals with major labels, taken steps taken to limit third-party applications dedicated to downloading infringing content, and experimented with fingerprinting technology, the USTR said. Even the RIAA said it was happy with VK, having taken the social network off its list in October.

Nevertheless, the mere fact that VK is on the USTR list again this cycle indicates that rightsholders outside the music industry are still complaining about the site. In its report, the USTR appeared to confirm it.

“Despite these positive signals, VK reportedly continues to be a hub of infringing activity and continues to be listed pending the institutionalization of appropriate measures to promote respect on its platform for IPR of all right holders, not just those with whom it has contracts, that are comparable to those measures used by other social media sites,” the USTR said.

Given that during the summer vKontakte felt it was already time for it to be removed from the United States’ blacklist, TorrentFreak caught up with the social network to gauge its reaction to this week’s apparent snub from the USTR.

“VKontakte continues its proactive work on licensing all audio and video content available on the social network,” a VK spokesperson said.

“In 2016, the Company signed an agreement with the world’s leading international music rights holders, including Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music, The Orchard, Merlin Network and Believe Digital, among others. The music section of VK’s mobile app for iOS has been available to users since August 2016, after a two-year absence.”

Addressing the USTR’s claims over other contentious content still present on the platform, VK said that more progress would be made during 2017.

“Next year, the Company will continue its focus on signing up the remaining rights holders not covered by the previous agreements,” the company said.

The measured tone from VK shows an unexpected level of patience, particularly after being mentioned in the same breath as The Pirate Bay yet again and despite significant efforts to appease rightsholders. Will it have done enough by this time next year? Only time will tell.

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