Pirated copies of the latest Hollywood movies leak all year round, often ripped from DVDs, Blu-rays or online streaming platforms.

Towards the end of the year, however, some real gems appear online in advance of their theatrical debut in what many have dubbed “screener season.”

Screeners are advance copies of recent movies which are generally sent out to critics and awards voters. These high-quality releases are subjected to intense security precautions by the studios, as they are highly sought after by online pirates.

Still, over the years hundreds of these screeners have leaked early. Most people probably remember last year’s spree of high profile screeners released by the Hive-CM8 group. These allegedly came from the talent agency Innovative Artists which was later sued by Warner Bros.

This year, however, things have been quiet on the screener front. While many have been sent off for review, the first have yet to leak to the public. That is, if they ever leak at all.

2017 screeners?

Looking at recent history, it’s almost unthinkable that no pirated screener copies will appear online. For more than a decade a healthy number have leaked from Hollywood’s own connections.

Below is an overview of the leaks per year, based on data from Oscar piracy watcher Andy Baio. These are only for movies that eventually received an Academy Awards nomination, so the actual number will be even higher.

The data clearly show that the major movie studios have managed to limit the leaks somewhat over the years, thanks to their increased security measures. But they’re far from perfect, as last year’s bump shows.

Leaked screeners of Oscar nominated films per Oscar year

Although it’s still relatively early, Hollywood will be happy to hear that based on this data it has never taken so long before a screener has leaked online.

In all years that were previously documented the first leaked screener came out before December 16th. This means that today’s absence of 2017 screeners is definitely noteworthy.

That said, the bulk of the leaks are often published late December or in January, so it’s too early to draw any conclusions. Time will tell if there are going to be any presents for pirates this Christmas.

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

Australia has been called out as the world’s piracy capital for several years, a trend local copyright holders hope to curb now that several pirate sites have been ordered to be blocked.

Earlier this week the Federal Court ruled in favor of key movie industry players, ordering ISPs to block access to The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, TorrentHound, IsoHunt, SolarMovie, and proxy and mirror services.

The landmark decision will make it harder for torrent users Down Under to visit these sites, but it won’t be impossible. In fact, before the blocks are implemented many of them are already actively looking into countermeasures.

Depending on the blocking methods ISPs will use, bypassing them may be as easy as switching to an alternative DNS service. Another option is to use Tor, or special “pirate browsers,” such as the one RARBG launched earlier.

Alternatively, a VPN service should also do the trick, as that will prevent ISPs from seeing users’ traffic.

This VPN option is in high demand in Australia. Data from Google Trends reveals that interest in anonymizing services has surged, with searches for “VPN” doubling right after the news broke on Thursday.

Aussie VPN searches

TF spoke to several VPN providers who confirm this observation. Many have noticed an increase in both traffic and sales from Down Under.

“We had nearly double the number of visitors from Australia yesterday,” ExpressVPN‘s David Lang informed TF, adding that they have little faith in the effectiveness of the court order.

“We are opposed to Internet censorship in any form, and in this case, we doubt the ruling will have a significant impact on torrent usage in Australia.”

At TorGuard, Benjamin Van Pelt noticed a massive traffic boost too.

“Since the site blocking decision was made official we immediately began seeing a 100% increase in traffic from Australia. I fully expect this trend to continue and we have already begun adding bandwidth in our Sydney and Melbourne data centers to accommodate the influx,” he says.

TorGuard’s traffic spike

NordVPN observed a similar spike in traffic during the same period, which they see as a direct result of Thursday’s ruling.

“There’s 110% increase in new users over the past 24 hours from Australia. The court order made a strong impact and people are in search of privacy it seems,” Iggy Holzman of NordVPN told TF.

Finally, the same is happening at Private Internet Access, where signups increased as well.

“After the news broke, we have definitely seen an increase in the region. I don’t have stats other than overall signups, but nonetheless, that number has increased. Simultaneously, our analytics shows that Australia has increased more as well,” PIA’s Andrew Lee said.

It is safe to conclude that restricting people’s access to pirate sites is not going to change everyone’s piracy habits overnight. Looking at similar cases in the past, that doesn’t come as a surprise really.

Earlier this year, research from Carnegie Mellon University showed that the UK blocks reduced traffic to pirate sites, but that they also significantly increased people’s interest in VPN services.

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Disclaimer: PIA, NordVPN and ExpressVPN are TF sponsors.

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

After taking the world by storm early 2014, Popcorn Time – the ‘Netflix for Pirates’ – has had a relatively quiet 2016.

After building to a crescendo last year, the original fork of the open source project went down after being targeted by the MPAA, leaving others to continue the mission.

Having previously skipped from time4popcorn.eu and popcorn-time.se, one of the teams still pushing the Popcorn Time project along now operate from Popcorn-time.to. This week they debuted a brand new feature in their latest beta that’s likely to make their software more appealing to an even broader audience.

“Most films are English speaking and most people around the globe do not speak English. Many people who studied English, do not master it well enough to enjoy a movie,” the team announced.

“Until now, we’ve provided a feature which allows the user to watch subtitles which are synced to the show, in the language he reads. But it’s not the same as hearing the texts in the language the user understands. It’s really less pleasing.”

To that end, the team have just added a new feature which adds dubbed audio in several languages to the library of movies available through the platform. French, Spanish, Italian, German and Portuguese are all supported.

When we first heard that the team were overdubbing different audio tracks over existing torrents, it raised many questions over how this could be achieved from a technical standpoint. Was the audio being pulled in on-the-fly from other sources? If so, how was it being sync’d up with the video?

However, it turns out the team had an altogether more straightforward solution to the problem that in hindsight makes complete sense.

“Popcorn Time constantly searches the web for torrents of a movie with the required language already dubbed. The choice of movies is being increased by the minute,” the team told TF.

“Under the good old subtitles button, you’ll see a new dubbing selection button. Click it, make your choice and push play. It now proceeds normally. Popcorn Time will stream the movie instantly dubbed with the selected language.”

So, in basic terms, when a user selects a new language in the Popcorn Time interface the software begins to download a brand new torrent, one that already has their selected language as the only option.

“It’s certainly good for children’s shows. The little ones can’t read yet. So work is done to provide dubbed movies in more languages. Dubbed children’s movies in German, Dutch, Greek, Estonian, Hebrew, Hungarian, Czech, Polish, Russian, Arabic are expected in the near future,” the team added.

The new feature is currently only available on desktop but an Android version is said to be coming soon.

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

In recent years copyright trolls have been accused of various dubious schemes and actions, but there’s one group that tops them all.

Prenda Law grabbed dozens of headlines, mostly surrounding negative court rulings over identity theft, misrepresentation and even deception.

Most controversial was the shocking revelation that Prenda uploaded their own torrents to The Pirate Bay, creating a honeypot for the people they later sued over pirated downloads.

Today, this and other evidence was presented in a criminal indictment filed in the Minnesota District Court. The U.S. Government accuses Prenda principals John Steele and Paul Hansmeier of running a multimillion-dollar fraud and extortion operation.

That the case might go criminal first came to light when Pirate Bay co-founders Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij were approached for information, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.

According to the indictment, the defendants earned millions of dollars in copyright lawsuit settlements from the public, by deceiving state and federal courts all over the country.

“In order to carry out the scheme, the defendants used sham entities to obtain copyrights to pornographic movies-some of which they filmed themselves – and then uploaded those movies to file-sharing websites in order to lure people to download the movies,” the indictment reads.

Through various companies, the goal of the conspiracy was to obtain the identities of alleged file-sharers of their pornographic films. As is common in these cases, that was achieved by obtaining a subpoena to compel ISPs to hand over personal details of subscribers.

This info was then used to extort the accused file-sharers, the Department of Justice alleges.

“After receiving this information, the defendants – through extortionate letters and phone calls – threatened the subscribers with enormous financial penalties and public embarrassment unless the subscribers agreed to pay a settlement, all thee while concealing their collusion in the alleged copyright infringement.”

The Pirate Bay plays an important role in this case. Not only were the founders of the site heard as witnesses, but the site was also named as part of Prenda’s honeypot scheme.

“Beginning in or about April 2011, defendants caused P.H. to upload their clients’ pornographic movies to BitTorrent file-sharing websites, including a website named the Pirate Bay, in order to entice people to download the movies and make it easier to catch those who attempted to obtain the movies.

“As defendants knew, the BitTorrent websites to which they uploaded their clients’ movies were specifically designed to allow users to share files, including movies, without paying any fees to the copyright holders,” the indictment adds.

The two Prenda principals have been arrested according to Star Tribune, who broke the story. They are charged with 18 counts in total, including conspiracy to commit fraud, money laundering and perjury.

Prenda crossed many lines in their settlement schemes, so it can’t be easily compared to other “trolling” cases. However, there are several similar outfits that will be seriously concerned about this indictment and the possible jail sentences Prenda’s bosses face.

As it turns out, the U.S. Government realizes very well that ‘pirate chasers’ are not above the law.

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A copy of the full indictment is available here.

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

Following a joint investigation with licensing outfit PRS for Music, last September officers from the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) and Merseyside police raided an address in Everton, Liverpool.

They were looking for Wayne Evans, a local DJ who they believed was involved in the unlawful distribution of music online.

Known online as OldSkoolScouse, Evans uploaded packs of the UK’s current Top 40 Singles to torrent sites each week. They included at least 200 uploaded to KickassTorrents, which proved particularly popular with fans.

In addition, Evans ran DeeJayPortal.co.uk, a website with a membership of more than 160,000 users which specialized in unlicensed a capella versions of famous tracks. Along with OldSkoolScouse.co.uk, another of Evans’ domains, it currently displays a PIPCU seizure notice.

In October 2016, the 39-year-old appeared before Liverpool Crown Court, pleading guilty to two counts of distributing an article infringing copyright and one of possessing or controlling an article for use in fraud.

Since cases in the UK tend to be cherry-picked for their PR value, it was no surprise to learn that Evans was painted by the prosecution as a serious criminal.

According to Liverpool Echo, the Top 40 packs were downloaded more than 523,000 times. There were almost 136,000 downloads of a capella tracks from DJPortal.

As a result, the Performing Rights Society for Music (PRS), which collects and distributes royalties on behalf of artists, estimated their losses at £1.054m for a single year period.

David Watson, defending, told the court that Evans hadn’t made much money from his file-sharing activities and that the estimates of PRS were just that, an estimate.

“These losses are necessarily speculative and difficult to quantify in this case, because not every illegal download leads to the loss of a legitimate sale,” Watson said.

The court heard how Evans had failed to obtain licenses from PRS for his online distribution. Of course, none would have been granted even if he’d asked, but that was beside the point.

Judge Robert Trevor-Jones accepted that Evans hadn’t been motivated by personal gain but said that the DJ knew what he was doing and the losses to PRS from his actions were significant.

“Given your intimate knowledge of the music industry I have no doubt that you would have been aware that what you were doing here was illegal,” he said.

Despite having no previous convictions, Evans was jailed for 12 months yesterday, a sentence the Judge believed would act as a “deterrent” to others.

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